Third post of the series about my a life-style change.
What is an alternative Lifestyle? Maybe I need to get rid of the ‘all and everything online’ thoughts? Maybe the whole internet is not that great as it seems to be? Maybe I need to search for a new profession, which I can make a living of in the future? What are the alternatives?
I would say that one alternative would be just finishing school, not thinking about other things than school and doing that one thing — school — the best possible. But there are two aspect why that is not possible for me. One is the fact, that all I do on the side is my passion which I trained over the past year — and years — and I do not want to through all that effort into the trash. I am serious that it needs to be possible that I can dig my own whole. The second is the problem with my mind, that I have to many ideas which I would like to work on ideally all at once. Ideas to change something. Ideas for a new Service or Product. Ideas about our earth, globalization, climatic changes and ideas about every thing else what happens around me.
That being sad, I am not able to just switch focus to not do what I currently want. But I need to specify what I want, need to watch out to not do the wrong thing, need to learn something about my projects and in the end should be able to adapt some habits of other peoples lifestyle.
All that could also be refereed to as GTD — Getting Things Done — but in a slightly other view than the normal GTD which I see as focused on the ‘work needs to get finished’. My view is the aspect of life time needs to get scheduled.
These are the ideas about what are the problems, what I could do. Next will be about the ideas how I can realize this.
Second post of the series about my a life-style change.
Some weeks ago, I have had a life style which I considered a bad work life balance. Most of the time I spend in front of my MacBook either sorting or editing pictures, coding some websites or writing stuff plus — worst — way to much procrastination — for example Twitter!
I considered that evil because I did not spend enough time on learning for school, doing sports and I did not spend enough time with friends!
First to the learning: I need to spend more time on learning this year. This year I attend 12th grade of a so called ‘BerufsOberschule’ (eng: College of Further Education) which will give me the right to study at a College (in Germany a ‘Fachhochschule’). But that kind of school is just a 3rd of a year long and I consider it hard to finish with great marks — to add: I attended a spanish foundation course as well. So I need to concentrate on learning to get of that school with a great examination!
Second about the Friends: Friends are crucial for everybody. I had just a few of which I really was able to talk to over the past years but that has changed now. I am happy about having people / friends around me. But sometimes I would like to spend some more time with them.
One last fact is sport: I would like to do more sport. Not just for my body but also for my mind. I would like to get more fresh air and to build some muscle power. All that can just be done by investing some time into it which I need to cut somewhere else.
These three things and some others are the main reasons for me writing this series. I have thought about my style-of-life a lot lately and that way I reconsider my style very often. The things I consider worth fighting for as well as the things I need to stop doing, reduce or the things I need to spend more time on.
Maybe it is just not possible to change everything. But hopefully it is possible to change as much as needed! I am also sure that I may do reconsider all of this very soon but for now I think this will be interesting for me to remember and share for someone who finds him self in the same situation.
This is my overview. This is the thing I would like to change. Next is the part where I see the problems.
What can change a live-style? What should change a live-style? What is a live-style? And if how, how should be a life-style designed?
All that are just a couple of questions I asked my self over the past month over and over again. Mostly inspired by great movies or books like ‘My Blueberry Nights’, ‘Into the Wild’ or ‘Seven Pounds’ — just to name a few, there are much more I watched.
I will be writing a series of posts on this topic, cause I think there is plenty to write about and that is part of the reason for me to write this down. I wrote earlier that I write this blog mainly for me to practice my english as well as for me to think about stuff and to try to express the thoughts I think which does not mean that I would not appreciate some comments.
I try to express — and maybe clear for me — the thoughts about life a little bit, even though I do not consider this series to be finished sometime near. The topic is a topic which changes over time. It changes with the situations I or you life in, with the people around me or you and every other factor which is changeable around you and me. That also means that the series may be out of date very soon — or at least some posts of it.
I try to keep everything organized and link the whole series up here to keep a point to of start.
- LSC: My Style of Life (2009-10-30)
- LSC: Where is the Problem about my Lifestyle (2009-11-13)
- LSC: Possibilities of Change (2009-12-29)
I have been on vacation for 2 weeks in Greece — which have been awesome to chill out, think about some stuff and get a little skinny at the beach. But one more thing I experienced was the grace of not having a constant connection to the internet.
Normally at my desk I connect to the wifi and have internet access almost every day and all day long — excluding the connection problems my ISP sometimes has. With this punctual connection I was able to focus on things I never knew I could get so much productivity out of, like writing posts or editing pictures.
I already was pretty good at disconnecting from sources of distraction before I experienced this, by closing instant messaging, twitter and mail clients but this need to walk somewhere to gain internet access made it even clearer. And it is not as easy as easy to just open the application to gain access but you need to walk somewhere and spend the time compressed, get back and again have no internet.
I do not call not having a constant internet connection good. I think it really is needed sometimes — like with web-development I almost every time use forums or other sources to get information about how to get rid of a problem — but it really is unnecessary other times.
I think I will try to clear my mind about this and maybe I will start to disconnect my macbook completely from the wifi in the future if I need to get some — no internet required — work done.
Is it possible to manage work without paper? I would like to say it is but for me it is not. At least not with the equipment and budget I own. A scanner is available but the one I own does not scan both sides of a document — and that would be crucial for me! Mac.AppStorm describes one possibility of a paper free office which sounds awesome and I would love it.
Even though, sometimes paper is just easier to handle than digital files. Some things can be found much quicker. But I am on my way. Soon I will be scanning some important files so that I own a digital backup of my certifications and other things of importance!
One fact is that it is easier for travel! And thats the time I think it really becomes crucial for me!
I have a problem. The past weeks I was pretty busy but I had topics to write about. Now that has changed. I have lots of time — even though I need to get many things organized and done — cause I have no school any more till the 15th of September.
Now what to do with so much spare time? Well at first I have to say that it is not just spare time. I have some work to do plus getting things done which I was not able to get finalized in the past weeks. But still there are loots of moments I think about what I want to do with the next weeks.
One of the things I started doing, is to read books. I never read much — maybe I should use ‘many’ cause I can count my read books at about two hands — but that changed about one and a half week ago since when I started to read The 4 hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. That book — plus some other factors which massed up over the past month — inspired me to read more, teach my self other things besides that tech stuff and maybe head into an other direction with what I want to do in the future.
I am nearly finished with that book and have a couple more to read and hope that I am going to remember as much as possible, so that I can use that stuff in my life and enhance my personality and getting better organized.
For now, I just can refer the 4 hour Work Week to you. It is an awesome book teaching you how to get more stuff done, better organized, more free time and maybe even how to get a little — or much — richer. For me I just hope that I can someday do great in this world and that book already taught me some very important things, now I just need to get used to them!
The past weeks and the upcoming are full of stress—and I wrote many times about that—but I have one more problem that occurred recently. What shall I do with new and maybe great ideas?
At the moment I’m preparing for my final exam. Schools coming to an end for this year of school and everyone tried to rush it to get projects and marks done in time. I’m trying to stay focused and to learn the stuff that needs to be learned.
Till I get one thing. And this one thing is a new idea. And it’s funny, new and especially new great ideas chop in if there is absolutely no time to think about them. I have the problem that if I have a new idea, I try to focus on that, brainstorm it and get to know what’s in the pot for me, if I can realize it, if it is possible or just if I could imagine to do it.
Lately I tried to focus on writing new ideas down, and stay focused on the projects I’m working at right now—school and some little client projects! Even though that is hard, it’s great training for my discipline to focus but it’s not easy!
I think everyone has problems like that, especially people who have many ideas. Most of the time they occur when there is no time and if there is time I have no ideas—which is great cause than I can get the ideas done which occurred while I had no time.
I hope I can stay focused, get school finished the best way I can and let new ideas be new ideas on paper.
Some weeks ago I decided that I wanted to get rid of some of the social-networks I was registered in. This is why and how I changed my use of social-networks.
My problem was that I tended to register an account at each and every social-network I was able to find, just to protect my nickname and / or to test what the network was all about. Till I hit a point where I started to think about why I have all this different social-networks? That was when I decided that something needed to change. What I did was that I created a MindMap of all the networks I was registered at and thought about the reasons, why I registered there. Moving the different networks around I decided which to use active, which to stay registered and not use actively and most important to delete! In the end I got a massive load of networks to delete.
There are some different reasons I decided to delete some networks, some of which were:
- that I had most people in two ore more different networks at a time
- the network had no value to me
- the network is not international
Maybe I’m wrong about this. I now some people who told me that it’s important to be in each and every network, in as many as possible, just to get your name out there. Maybe that’s right but if it is, I decided against that. Why? I think it’s not important to be in as many places as possible to meat the right people. It’s much more important to be at the right place at the right time with the right people. Maybe I decided against the ‘best places’ but for me the places I’m still at are the once which provide valuable to me.
One question I got a lot in the past weeks was why I deleted all my accounts at local networks which concentrate on German / European people. My answer to that is that nearly all people I had there as contacts are registered in at least one international network where I’m too which makes the local network somehow senseless. I’m an international person, I’m interested in what happens all over the world, I’m not really interested what happens locally and if something crucial happens I hear about it thought the people registered at the international networks. Local networks — in my eyes — are some kind of limit.
Maybe some of you think differently about this but for me it meant that I now am registered at social-networks of value to me. Spend less time in the once which didn’t meant anything to me and have more time for things I love to do — somehow that was a GTD decision but I’m feeling better and that is what counts.
