Let's Fight (our) Mediocrity, One Round at a Time!
All in Life
Already vacation deprived, a particularly stressful summer at work added to my chronic wanderlust. It is fair to say, that I barely ever felt so in need of a vacation. Looking for the perfect destination for an adventure holiday, we settled for the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, the self-proclaimed happiest place on earth. As our visit in August fell in the middle of the Monsoon season, would rain clouds get in the way of our soul search?
It has been a while since I published a full-length Life-Sparring round. My excuse? Stress! The perfect opportunity to take a closer look at my strange relationship with one of the strangest side-effects of our modern lifestyle.
Despite being occasionally whiny about my genetical uphill battle when it comes to athletic performance and body composition, I enjoy a reasonable bill of health and my life in general. This, however, does not stop me from occasionally thinking about death and I think you should do so too. Read to hear why!
While in recent years I mostly read nonfiction, I strongly believe that novels can be just as powerful when it comes to broadening the horizon and understanding the big picture.
I think that to understand the world, our history, even contemporary and future developments, it takes both, reading history books for a factual framework and reading novels to get a feeling for the zeitgeist.
While the origin of my life-long interest in Asia will likely stay a mystery forever, I know for sure that there are a few brilliant books that shaped this interest. Among the many I want to highlight five that stood out in particular.
About four years ago I started to show severe signs of getting addicted to a popular mobile phone game. After reaching a point where playing the game began to disrupt parts of my life, I made a rather radical decision: I deleted all games from my phone and decided to get my fix from something much more productive, a flashcard game to learn Chinese. Interested to hear how that worked out?
Today’s Life-Sparring round is all about Bagel. No, I don’t mean the dry stepbrother of the doughnut, but another ambitious Kickstarter project I backed last year. The Korean team of Bagel Labs promised nothing less than "The World's Smartest Tape Measure". Does the sleek looking Bagel device live up to that promise?
After chasing big and lofty goals in 2016, the focus in 2017 is on habit setting. Using a strategy called "Mini Habits", I try to set small but very regular tasks to establish healthy habits that bring me closer to my ambitious goals, with much less stress. To make sure that I am not forgetting my daily goals, I was experimenting finding the perfect mobile up to nudge me at the right time. Which of the contenders Irunurun, Nozbe or Strides proofs to be best suited to keep me on track over the year?
Despite the bad reputation of New Year’s Resolutions in the scientific world and my mixed record with meeting my annual goals in the past, I continue to make resolutions year after year. New Year's Eve would just not feel the same without good intentions and lofty goals.
After going all S.M.A.R.T. in 2016, this year it's about going small, taking a page or two out of Stephen Guise's book Mini Habits.
