I'm Ben

Here's what does it for me

[benwoopo]

Add a little Elon

Elon Musk recently stated that he believes too many people are pursuing finance and law. Now before you get up in arms about his abrasive comment, read the next few lines of this post.

If instead of operating in little satellite projects as we do, imagine if most people collaborated on the worlds biggest problems. And imagine if the worlds greatest minds were focused on mobilizing and organizing these people. Big problems like hunger and homelessness. Problems like inequality and environmental deterioration. 

Millions of people working in unison with the vision of one or a few visionaries.

Its an idealist way to imagine things but people like Elon Musk are proving that it is possible. It is possible to have an aspiration to save the world and actually make progress towards that goal. We’re so focused on incremental success. Making an app that solves a small problem. Creating a service for a small community of professionals. Getting fast food into peoples’ mouths more quickly.

As young professionals, in fact as human beings, we have a unique opportunity to take a step back and consider this possibility, that maybe it makes more sense to help push forward an initiative that will make a HUGE difference in a decade or two, not a reasonable difference in the next year or two.

[benwoopo]

When you wake up in the morning

Are you happy and excited to see the messages and alerts on your phone? When you see notifications do they represent something positive in your life, or do they represent something you wish you didn’t have to deal with? Events in the calendar, email subscriptions you belong to, and messages you receive represent a large percent of your near future.

Use these alerts as a compass for your goals

If they indicate you’re moving in a direction you’re not happy about, at least now you know. But EVEN MORE powerful is the idea that you could change what the notifications and alerts look like. You could subscribe to information that helps you learn a valuable skill, schedule events in your calendar that you’ve wanted to attend but always got caught up in weekend “activities”, and associate with people who share your goals and message you useful or inspiring content. In this day and age we have the power to control what comes into our lives and into our phones. Use that power.

Are you stoked on what you’ve been up to this weekend?

 Was there something you would’ve rather been doing? A different type of person you would’ve rather met? A goal you would’ve liked to work towards?

How you spend your weekends is a microcosm of how you dedicate your free time. In fact if you’re a working professional IT iS how you spend your free time. If there’s a park you’ve always wanted to see, a language you’ve wanted to learn, a person you’ve wanted to meet, these beautiful two days at the end of each week are your gaping opportunity to do so.

No doubt there’s good reason to celebrate at the end of each week. And everyone has their own way of decompressing. But think of it as an opportunity to strive for more rather than an excuse to lose yourself.

[benwoopo]

WorkLife

At about 2PM today my eyes started closing on me. I got 7 hours of sleep last night but there seemed to be nothing I could do. I had eaten healthy all day. Had a moderate amount of caffeine, and my right eyelid in particular was committed to overthrowing my eye.

The answer may lie in that posture one assumes while focusing. When you press your fingers into our temple as if it will allow you to tell the future. Maybe you’ve just finished one task and are trying to figure out the next one. You know you have a laundry list but have no idea where to start. You’re operating in ambiguity and don’t know exactly how to clear the clouds.

I worry that if I remain in this state of focus I’ll become overly exhausted every day.

Relaxation can help clear the mind. Clearing the mind can help with focus. 

But at the same time this means there must be clear mechanisms in place for not missing appointments or obligations. One must still remember to sign up for that thing or take care of that one guy or update that other team. Tough to take time to strategize if you’re leaving a wake of unattended tasks behind you.

Then again there is a balance to be struck here. Between being on top of every urgent task and using all of your time to think long term and perfect a plan of attack. Every person requires a different balance for each project. Time to learn mine.

[benwoopo]

Tomorrow, a CEO

After two days of work under my belt, thirty pages of notes to review, dozens of stakeholders to keep in the loop, a manager to report to and keep aligned with, and tens of thousands of users to focus on, I’ll be meeting with someone who would scoff at my workload.

Tomorrow I meet with the vendor in charge of my entire product, their engineers, data folks, growth VPs, and the CEO. I am expected to build credibility. Perhaps the best approach is candor. But losing the respect of their team would make progress on my end dramatically more difficult.

I must appear as a friend not a foe, yet maintain a firm position as a stakeholder and product owner.

My instinct (including hundreds of productivity and self-help articles/books) tells me to enter the meeting blind to the roles and ranks of the attendees. “We are a team of experts with a common goal, let’s agree on what that is and crush the obstacles in our path”. “Oh yeah and this is my third day on the job.”

Buddha might say, “remember the middle way.” Not assertive, not passive. Not good cop, not bad cop. Just candor. 

Credible. Capable. On the Job.

“Although I worked here last summer, this is my first week. I’m excited to learn about the current way things are done, how you guys see the success of this project, and what I can do to help.” Credible.

“I have some questions I’d like to ask regarding your vision for success. Who can I speak to on your side? What can I do to make this a seamless relationship? What blockers can I remove? When can I come in and work with the team?” Capable.

“Here’s what I heard today. I’ll take these action items and loop back with you guys on the progress. Look forward to meeting invitations from me.” On the Job.

[benwoopo]

A brief history of man

Nature favors quantity*variety. Civilizations have historically thrived when they allowed people from many different backgrounds to intermingle and work together. Babies of people closely related are far more likely to suffer from life-long illnesses. Mixed race children are typically more healthy.

Why not apply this approach to success in life itself?

Before every major decision, imagine putting hundreds of diverse concepts to the test and being able to test them for success. It seems impossible, but given due time it might be feasible. Before deciding on a career path. Imagine shadowing 50 different professionals over the course of a year. The difficulties: knowing what to test, organizing the sessions, non-disclosure agreements, having something to offer for the favors. But most of all, be open to the results that might shock you. Be prepared for difficult change.

[benwoopo]

In one paragraph...

Just finished “The Alchemist”:

The world has a soul. You can access this soul because the world has a language. The only way to understand the language is by listening to your heart. It is easy for children to listen to their hearts and visualize their goals. As we get older the heart calls for our attention. We routinely ignore it and make contradictory decisions, decisions that don’t make us happy. Our hearts therefore become hurt and don’t want to be hurt again. So the heart speaks less and more quietly until we cannot hear it. We can try to access the wisdom of the world by acknowledging and responding to our hearts regularly. Building a healthy relationship with the heart is essential. Listen to eachother and trust one another.

Don’t let the voice go quiet.

[benwoopo]

Put down the screen pt 2...

Surprisingly, the majority of results on the web about reducing screen time are catered to parents trying to peel their teens away from the TV. I find this ironic since now everyone under the age of 60 more or less lives in front of screen for work or leisure.

Taking screens out of the bedroom was one nice piece of advice given to concerned parents that i believe applies to all ages. This means no TV. No wifi. No cell phones or ipads. Think this one is worth a shot no matter who you are.

Are there glasses that reduce the impact of screens? As it turns out, the answer is yes!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-matthew-alpert-od/blue-light_b_5570433.html

The main concern according to the Huffington Post is that blue light from computer and cel phone screens is directly damaging our eyes. With the secondary concern being general irritation, dryness and strain which comes from not looking at far away things for a long time and not blinking. If you’re like me, and 99% of people, who won’t be buying the anti-blue light lenses. Try a more simple method, put down the screen, or disconnect wifi and take tv out of the bedroom.

PS - Eye stress also occurs with book reading although its not dangerous.

http://yoursightmatters.com/prevent-eyestrain-when-reading-your-favorite-book/

[benwoopo]

Put down the screen...

If you had to take a picture that represented “your friends/colleagues at work” what would it look like? Would they be chatting with each other about an initiative? On the phone with an important client? Perhaps even making something with their hands if that’s their trade. Walking around my companies offices today I noticed something. My friends and colleagues at work look like this...

Not that they’re unhealthy. My colleagues are probably among the healthiest group of Americans I know. But when I observed employee after employee, group after group, room after room, the theme prevailed. Working at my company, which is a tech company to be fare, means hunching over a laptop, getting lost in the contents of the screen, and looking up once an hour to do something the screen told you to do. In meetings, the presentation being delivered is now live streamed on the laptops of everyone present. You no longer have to look up.

Occasionally I look up from the screen to glance at my cell phone. Its like a breath of air. A few moments of social stimulation and personal email check up and I’m back into the Operating System of Contemporary White Collar Work.

I wake up at 7AM and check my cell phone for updates. I shower, then check my laptop for news and emails. Then at 9 when I get to work, its laptop time until noon when I break for lunch where I’m checking my cellphone. Then its laptop time until 5 or 6. Once I’m home its laptop time to write/read articles or watch tv with my roommate. Thats about 12 hours of staring at a screen.I’m determined to find a way to do my job with less screen time.

I don’t know if the future holds a better solution. How can I reduce screen time? Are there glasses which reduce the impact it has on your eyes. Does reading off a screen similarly stress the eyes? Etc... More to come.

[benwoopo]

We ignore most of our communication

Verbal communication, body language, texting. We share our thoughts and feelings through these mediums every moment of the day. Yet very few people seem to take the time to study the art of communication.

Emails are the most prominent form of business-oriented communication. Billions of emails are sent every day. This means millions of hours are likely wasted writing and reading unnecessary email content. Time to change all that...

[benwoopo]

One thing I overspend on

Most of the clothes I wear are from old sports teams or hand-me-downs. I don’t buy lavish meals. I spend within my means.

But the one thing I cannot get enough of is the beautiful, beautiful, molten gold that flows out of powerful monitor speakers. It doesn’t go from the speakers to your ears, not when its a good sound. It seeps into the pores of every object around you. And when you’re ready to receive it, the music hums into the air around your body.

With the vibrations moving through your body and mind, literally, you are the sound. And everyone else in the room with you is also the sound, and they know you are too. And all the people in the world listening to it know you are the sound because they are it too. And the moment they completed the song and played it once through, the artist knew you would be the sound because they were the sound first.

Just by mentioning “One Love” by Bob Marley you have become the sound. It has gone into your mind and we now share it. This is how music links us. This is how sound links us. This is how music becomes all of us.

So go somewhere with some good sound and listen away. Or come on over to my place. There’s nothing like sharing the vibrations.

[benwoopo]

Why I’ll Never Waste Another Minute Pt. 2

5. The Middle Way. Buddha taught the Middle Way. When there are two extremes, take the path that splits the two. When you can’t decide if you should pig out on a tub of ice cream or not, only eat one scoop. When you’re angry with yourself, be gentle. When you’re wasteful, be slightly productive. The key here is not to get to the finish line in everything you do all the time, instead go halfway, the Middle Way, and you’ll find yourself at the finish soon enough.

6. The Good Breath. Before doing anything. Before anything important in particular. Stop thinking about everything except your breath. Do this until your breath is relaxed but strong. Feel the emotion your mind and body are trying to conjure up. But then focus again on the breath. This allows you to become more acutely aware, and you can apply your wisdom to the situation. The key here is breaking the link between “contact” with a situation and the feeling which follows. This is how monks avoid reaction to pain or hunger or disgust. Don’t just take a deep breath. Take a few. Wait until the breath is everything. Then continue.

7. Better to have less good. Facebook feeds, news feeds, twitter feeds. Our lives are now inundated with “feeds”. Some of them feeding more healthy material than others. Most of the feeds we choose to track contain meaningful content such as relevant political or global news or family updates. But most of them also come with an onslaught of junk food for the brain, links to street fights, sexualized situations, and meaningless violence. Consider cutting off these feeds entirely, the good and the bad. And replacing them with feeds which only bring positive material, learning material, material which helps us better understand ourselves and the world around us in a healthy way. I’m still looking for these feeds... more to come.

These 7 items were all learnings that resulted from a single technique, meditation with focus on the breath. Our breaths are numbered and precious. Don’t waste them.

[benwoopo]

Why I’ll never waste another minute

The concept of the aesthetic monk is becoming glorified in the back of the Western World’s mind. Bhuddism and meditation clubs sprawl across campuses and self-help books boasting “mindfulness” as the key to daily success and happiness grow in popularity. But most of all the phrases “be here and now” and becoming “aware of the present moment” are such common vernacular that they’ve lost all meaning. Even my high school band was called “This is Life”. 

After ten days of silence at a meditation retreat in Thailand I found it quite difficult to recalibrate my thoughts to the normal world. I had not seen technology, non-vegan food, artwork, or anything outside the walls of a jungle monastery in southern Thailand, Wat Suan Mokkh. It has been almost two months since those hot silent July days and I’ve still only been able to synthesize a couple of major take aways:

1. Turn your focus inward. As a western society we have made incredible advancements, but they have almost all had to do with worldly and external objects. We’ve landed on the moon and are looking further without having the slightest understanding of ourselves. Imagine a life in which you take just as much time to understand your body and mind as you do to understand the things swirling around outside of them.

2. The mind and body are not “you”. I have very little control over my thoughts. That’s why when I meditate it is extremely difficult to focus my mind on my breath for very long at all. My relationship with my mind is almost exactly like that of an external being, a pet which needs to be trained. I can feel it becoming more obedient when I feed it properly and ensure it remains disciplined. Same applies to the body. Which leads to the third take away.

3. The only way to attain a high degree of control over the mind and body is training. I was surprised to hear the monks of Wat Suan Mokkh using this term. I had only used it to describe weight lifting and lap running for sports during high school and college. But the truth is the mind is a muscle which can be flexed in different ways. Most of us go through most or all of our lives without ever considering training our bodies and minds. This picture of my concrete bed during the retreat reminds me of this lesson. One great way to try this is through meditation. Give it a shot! P.S. This also means the mind needs rest like other muscles. Stop it from wandering and practice mindful behavior occasionally.

4. We need much less than we think. The monks at Wan Suan Mokkh do as Buddha did. Concrete beds, wooden pillows, don’t take like, eat vegan, one meal a day, bare necessities of everything. For ten days I ate either one or two meals each day. I never felt hungry, tired, or ill. I felt highly aware and present, we even volunteered to do physical labor for one of the days and only had one meal that day. Using less electricity, less gas, less food, less water, less energy in general, is a simple and direct way to save the planet. This practice encapsulates much of what the monks practice and teach. Live on less. Leave more for others. Unselfishness is the key to enlightenment.

More to come...

[benwoopo]

Successful people are constantly sought out as mentors. Sadly, most people do a terrible job of asking for mentoring. They come off as desperate, awkward, and irritating. But busy people LOVE helping others who take action, so there is good … Continued

[benwoopo]

Going to do this everyday.