The following is a composite of 3 different notes I wrote in my Evernote that I never published, all around November 2013. I feel that they are worth reexamining, which is what I’m doing these vomits for.
Deactivated Facebook again last night. Or was it the night before? I feel like a much happier, lighter, kinder and more thoughtful person for it, and my wife agrees. I’m not even particularly interested in studying the reasons why- it has to do with the structure of the place, the nature of the game, the architecture, how it affects behaviour.
Everything is a game and you have to choose your games wisely. I deleted quora and tumblr from my phone, so now the only way I spend time on my phone is either reading (I’m currently barrelling through Venkat Rao’s stuff- I was previously reading Paul Graham) or writing, which I’m doing right now. A simple yin-yang of reading and writing, learning and doing, acting and reflecting.
Quitting smoking has made me more conscious of my health and hygiene then I was before I started. I wonder if any Antifragile concepts apply here. I used to sometimes skip brushing my teeth, and I never flossed. I’d also drink lots of sugary drinks. As a smoker, your mouth is an ash tray anyway. Once in a while if I smoked too much I’d scrape the icky yellow film off my tongue with the side of a pair of tweezers. It was disgusting and smelt like death. Every do you do then? You smoke another cigarette- cleaning your tongue lets you taste the cigarette better, and sinultaneously numbs you to the signals your body is sending you. This is part of why it’s hard to quit- when you do step outside the cave, the world is painfully, unbearably bright- and so you rush right back in.
I need to eliminate tumblr, Quora etc from work, and I’m going to use the tomato.es system to get chunks of work done. It’s embarrassing that I still haven’t gotten to a stable system of work that I’m comfortable with that also has a decent ROI… sometimes my vomits feel like the most productive parts of my day. This should not be the case.
I was thinking about peer pressure. I was revisiting some elon musk quotes that I’ve been putting together and I found myself getting naturally rather pumped up- I had a pretty productive day self-management wise- I tidied up my drafts in a major way. How much does that matter? It’s not the same as doing your best work but it’s better than procrastinating completely.
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The idea is to reconstruct yourself. Why do it? Partially because you can. Partially because you’re curious. Partially because you don’t like the precise mix of your identity and self at a given moment. Something about you causes you pain, anguish, suffering, embarrassment. That same thing diminishes your joy, your passion, your beauty.
There is always a resistance, and with good reason- (or at least, it used to have a good reason. Circumstances have changed faster than we typically do). Drastic change can be damaging, hurtful, shocking. But they applies both to change from without and change from within. And internal change needs to be sustainable or you’ll revert to your last backup/saved state. External change doesn’t give a shit about you. The world will move on whether you’re ready or not. This is a source of anxiety. What matters is being able to act, firmly, boldly.
Need/want to dramatically increase output.
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Lately I’ve been getting increasingly obsessed with making sense of large numbers. I feel like it’s important. Amazon made 61 billion in revenue last year. A manned mission to mars costs about 230 billion. There are 7 billion people in the world.
I want to understand history, civilizations, shipping, air travel, the global economy. Statement is probably worth 10,000 sgd. My house costs about 300,000. My company is probably worth about 1,000,000, maybe more. I know you can’t put a price on things, but too often we use that as an excuse to not even try. Visakanv.com is probably worth 2000, 3000… but who would buy it? It’s value exists only to me. Would i sell it for 10,000? Erm I can save the data. I can start over.i deactivated my Facebook- how much were my connections worth? No matter, I can recreate them.
We are all salesmen, we are all traders.
I make a salary. Could I get more than I’m worth at the moment? Could I deliver more? How much is each hour of my life worth at the moment? How much am I burning when I spend time on reddit, quora, etc? How much are my books worth?
Time is money in the sense that money can pay off grunt work, free up space.
I used to smoke about 2 packs a week. I get a little breathless thinking about it. I remember my monthly expenses for smoking when I was in NS were 70-100 bucks a month. That’s about 4 nice meals at moderately pricey places, or maybe 1-2 really lavish ones- things I never did until I became a working adult. And I kinda regret it a little, I didn’t realize what I was missing out on. It’s worth skipping 4-5 mcdonalds meals to eat somewhere nicer than swensens or pastamania. I never had a poached egg in my life until I was 23. Didn’t know what I was missing out on. That said most 23 year olds probably don’t know what it’s like to be paying off a mortgage that’s supposed to take 30 years to fully pay off.
(Wow this feels good. I like doing vomits.)
You should travel alone or with trusted friends as early as you can. Live on your own as early as you can. Understand how you correspond to reality. The shelter of a parent is misleading. If you have a pet, clean its shit yourself. It’ll teach you something. HAH so that’s where parents develop their “it builds character” shtick. I don’t care about character- it’s about decision-making skills. Or are they the same thing? You have to live in your own filth and be forced to deal with it. It’s simple economics really. Nothing good comes out of having other people clean your shit- everybody should work a shitty service job.
Anyway. How much does an smrt train cost? What about the mrt network? How much revenue does the public transport system make a day? How many employees do they have? How many policemen are there in Singapore? How about in the world? How many ipods? What’s a gallon in litres? (Had to look that up- 3.785.) A mile is 1.6km. A yard is .9 meters, so the whole 9 yards is 8.1 meters.
Marina bay sands cost S$8 billion. The land cost 1.2 billion sgd. Esplanade cost sgd 0.6 billion.
Largest container ship- maersk triple E: 18, 000 boxes, which can contain 895,000,000 bananas. 0.89 billion bananas. How many bananas can a person eat in her lifetime?
20 of these triple-e ships cost 3.8 billion USD to build. They weigh 55,000 tonnes each. Built by Koreans. (Europeans too expensive. Chinese insufficient tech.)
20 million containers out at sea right now. There are over 600 million containers in existence.
10, 000 containers go missing every year. That’s about 70 a day. “Low probability things happen all the time.”
About 5000 commercial planes in the air right now. How many container ships?
Cheaper to ship scottish cod over 10,000 miles- 16, 000 km- to china for filleting and back than it is to have it done in scotland. Shipping is practically free.
Only 5% of containers are physically inspected.
In 2 years a ship travels to the moon, back and to the moon again.
98% of shipworkers are male. 33% are filipino.
Freight prices were about 5usd a ton in the 50s. Now its about 0.16 usd per ton.
The US navy helped to get it right, and it’s standardised internationally. Since the 70s?
1980: 100 million tonnes of cargo.
2012: 1, 500 million tonnes.
How much does an escalator cost? An mrt gantry? A public phone? How many cars are there in SG, in the world? Cement trucks? Lorries? How much does block 71 cost? An elevator?
I feel so horribly illiterate.