January 2014.
Another day passes. My 2nd day of not smoking. Feels good, feels fresh. Some unsettled stirrings- mouth ‘itchiness’, hot eyes, a bit too much oxygen, a bit of muscle soreness… but I’ve been here before and I know that another cigarette simply won’t help. I got this. This is maybe my fourth or fifth attempt at quitting, and my first time really doing the easyway thing. I feel like I got this. Not going to talk about that anymore.
Marketing
The most important thing about marketing I think is really positioning. Figuring out how to think about your product. What do people hire your product to do? And how do you reach out to them? What do you have to say to them to trigger the response you want to trigger? It’s all about framing, about setting the tone and context for everything else. It’s about identifying meaning, value.
What is some good marketing that’s been done to me? I appreciate XiaoMi’s marketing wisdom in selling out 5000 phones in 42 seconds. That’s a news event, that’s great PR. My wife bought one,”and I got to try it a little bit. It feels very bright and cheery. It feels a little bit plastic and fragile in the handles- it’s a little too light. And it came in really industrial-warehouse packaging, rather than the pretty iphone/mac experience. But I suppose you get what you pay for. I’d totally but it for my mum, for instance.
What else? I don’t know, I don’t buy very much. I bought a Razer keyboard because I wanted a mechanical keyboard. I made the purchase impulsively because I was willing to spend X on a keyboard, wanted a keyboard ASAP, didn’t want to waste time shopping around. After buying it I was mildly disappointed with it- it’s really bulky and cumbersome. It looks like a great piece of work but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I guess it would work great as a gaming keyboard.
What else have I bought? A couple of IKEA light fixtures, they add a nice warm tone to the house. I used some cheap speakers for my home, good enough for me. I haven’t bought new clothes in a while but I guess the next time I buy I’m going to be a little more selective about fit, now that I can afford better.
I absolutely fell in love with the macbook air and I would not get another laptop that wasn’t either a macbook air or pro. I knew it was prettier and more stylish and whatnot, but I didn’t know that it was also a whole lot less laggy than any Windows device. That’s the real deal clincher, the real thing worth paying more money for. That you can open up the macbook and it starts in seconds. Literally no discernable lag. Like wow.
My Samsung galaxy note 2 has served me really really well. I don’t need a new phone anytime soon but when I’m due for a new one… I’ll still seek out the input of this guy I know who’s crazy about researching gadgets. If he recommends a Samsung option I’d probably pick that. Otherwise I’d go with whatever he suggests.
I’m tempted to buy from the brands I’ve encountered in my line of work. Bonobos. Greats. Bellroy. Shipping would be a concern though, I think. I get my haircuts and shaves at the barber below my block. Ever since I experienced getting shaved by a professional, I have zero interest in shaving myself. I basically let it grow until it bothers me, then I get a shave and haircut.
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I don’t care about the same things I used to care about as a teenager. This is obvious to any adult, but it’s rarely a compelling argument to any teenager. Whatever you’re going through then is a big deal at the time. I’m 24 now, I’m married and a homeowner and I’m reasonably willing to think about my future rather than focus too much on short-term concerns. I can reasonably anticipate that my current short-term concerns aren’t in sync with what I would want ten years from now.
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Haven’t done vomits in a while so let’s just jump right into it.
I’ve been carrying a lot of pointless baggage in my head when I should really just externalise x3.
I want to refactor my blog and all my writing. What have I done that’s actually good, useful, lasting?
Hacking the 7 sins
Let’s run through the hacking seven sins idea. The seven sins are really impulses left unchecked. I group them into what I call the 4 appetite-driven errors, 2 twin identity based errors and the time/perception based error. ALL of them are bugs, all caused by small-mindedness.
4 appetites- destruction, consumption, accumulation and conquest. Their corresponding sins are wrath, gluttony, greed and lust. You deal with them by ruminating on the concept of diminishing returns.
Wrath: destroy small-mindedness, not people or things. Destroy ignorance. You destroy an enemy when you make her your friend.
Gluttony and greed- consume knowledge, ideas, experiences- things that last and multiply. Accumulate love, friendship, joy, kindness, meaning.
Lust- conquer hearts and minds, hope, respect. It’s okay and normal to be sexual, but sexual conquest for its own sake is vacuous. The only dominion you can truly have is over yourself- no more, no less.
2 identity errors- envy and vanity/pride. They melt away when you realise that people are infinite. There is nothing to be jealous about- every person has her own fears, insecurities. Love them instead, or be indifferent. Envy is simply a reminder that you aren’t doing justice to yourself. Vanity is the absence of gratitude- you can’t seriously be vain when you realise that you owe almost everything to circumstances and others who came before you. Nothing is truly yours. Even your mind and your knowledge and your skills are gifts that you’re lucky to have.
Sloth is the hardest for me. I didn’t even know how to make sense of it. What’s the flaw? Sloth is aversion to work, the short-sighted belief/wish that life will be easier if you just do what is simple and easy, avoidable. A desire for comfort. The problem isn’t just that the magic happens outside your comfort zone, but that staying in your comfort zone weakens you. It makes you less equipped to handle life’s challenges. A few minutes of exercise a day will make daily life easier. It takes less effort to keep things in order than it does to try to undo chaos. The enlightened sloth invests her resources into becoming more resourceful so that she can have an easier life. Unenlightened sloth is a consequence of a narrow perspective, ignorant of compounding effects. It’s escapist, fantasising about a non-existing hypothetical future.
Of all the problems I think sloth is the worst- my biggest weakness and the one I need to focus hardest on overcoming.
Sloth is the hardest
I want to do more to overcome sloth. I want to overcome it myself and I want to help others do it too. I want this to be my primary long focus in life right now- I want to take what I now intellectually know to be true, and make it the central insight of my being. I want it to resonate emotionally, physically.
What’s the plan? The most urgent/important thing is for me to quickly get ahead of schedule with my work. I cannot afford to work on my pet/pleasure projects until I get that stuff out of the way. I’m going to use the dark woods analogy from waitbutwhy.com.
I’ll write about work stuff in a separate vomit. I’ll start that vomit now because its top priority. Then I’ll return to this when I’m done/ready.
Heat Seeking Missile
So the question to ask is- what are the questions WE need to answer to let ourselves be discovered by the people we want in our lives? I realise I often write what I think “will sell” to a broader audience (that I don’t really care about) instead of what I think really needs to be written- what I save for an imaginary non-existent audience that won’t actually appear until I do what I feel in my heart needs to be done.