EthidiumBromide (EtB)

Blog on personal development

[ethidiumbromide-blog]

General thoughts #3

The new app I use for tracking sleeping patterns, SleepTime, so far doesn’t give me any conclusive data. If possible I would like to maybe install a camera or so and see if it confirms the data that the app gives me. Not sure whether my gf would like that though. :-) So, what have I been up to? I finished 1984 by George Orwell a while back, still want to make a book review for that here. Additionally I’m now on 90% on my e-reader towards finishing Gulliver’s Travels. Interesting book. Currently he is living in a society with horses, who evolved to be the intelligent species while humans are the ‘animals’. 

My challenge for the last two weeks was to read 10 pages of the immunology book per day, but it has been more like 2 pages per day... on average! I should probably let it go and see if I can work on another project challenge coming week.

I think I should work more based on my excel file, where all challenges are listed with comments etc., so that I can keep track of everything better.

My one month without alcohol failed on the last day, when we had a Halloween party with some friends... sad times. On the bright side, I have not been hungover for a long while now, so no waste of time that way. 

I would really like to see whether I can manage to get up every day at 06.00, then excercise (run, planking etc.), medidate for 10 minutes, prepare a meal more proper than just cornflakes and then still be well in time for work.

My tumblr should probably become more organized. Having ‘general posts/updates’, ‘challenge specific posts’, ‘thoughts/diary’ etc. This would possibly improve my ability to keep following the ‘red thread’.

I’ve decided to open my blog again. Probably noone will read my private thoughts, but its kind of exciting to think that one day someone might read some accidentally and find an interest in the things that I write about what is going on in my life [/end of gigantic sentence]. As I’m writing, I am staying aware of the fact that one of the goals of starting tumblr was to improve my (scientific) writing... Hope it gets better soon.

Anyways, many good thoughts, but now I got a new game to play: Faster than light. Let’s see. Hopefully I will post tomorrow again.

New challenge(s): - Read a <200 words book every month (ft. colleague D)

[ethidiumbromide-blog]

General thoughts #2: Guitar and Games

Today I first wasted my morning by sleeping until 11.30, after which I played games until 14.00. Thereafter, I played some guitar and learned that Ed Sheeran’s I SEE FIRE is definitely outside of my league for now. 

Even though I have these projects laid out, I’m still often too lazy to even just get up and make some lunch, do groceries or clean the appartment a bit. I’d rather just sit on my ass all day and play some games and browse a bit. This behaviour is exactly what I want to change, by settings all these challenges and step by step training my ‘brain muscle’, increasing discipline, motivation and mental energy capacity. 

I realize now that what I might start to really like about this blogging is that it does not take that much time, it definitely feels very easy-going to just write what’s on your mind and it is at the same time rather useful. HOWEVER, I realize that in order to really make steps here, I might want to be more aware/conscious of what I’m writing, how I structure it and what vocabulary I use. In principle, I’d have to set some topics in the beginning for myself to write about, write an introduction > different paragraph for each topic > discussion and conclusion, pretty much like an academic article.

I installed an app that tracks your sleep, only data for two nights so far so can’t make any conclusions yet, let’s see what it will tell us. I’ve also asked a friend about his experience with nootropics or ‘smart drugs’, as I’m interested in maybe trying it some time, towards improved reading ability of long pieces of text (immunology chapters). Also, I recently found a link on quora to a book about ‘fast reading’, I might get the pdf and see if it can help me. Such basic skills are very useful in fueling and optimizing your other activities. I often feel, though, that I’m just looking for excuses, but that’s fine I guess as long as I finish a project per week.

For today I’ll look for some Halloween costumes with my girlfriend, tomorrow we’ll go for a nice hike with some friends. 

New challenges I thought of: - Familiarize myself with statistics, another relevant challenge for me - Sing and play I see fire by Ed Sheeran

[ethidiumbromide-blog]

Introduction to blog

The main drive behind my decision to start a blog is that I am constantly trying to improve myself. Recently, I learned that writing a short piece of text every day will already be a good “life excercise”. This will be a long-term goal and motivation to work on other projects as well; I figured that writing about new projects might give an extra boost to my discipline in progressing with these projects. Topics of the blog, which will probably forever only be read by myself, is to create weekly projects in which I will pursue a specific challenge. This can be optimizing something in my life, trying something new or finishing a task that had to be done. Besides that, as I always to a lot of research generally before I start new things, I will also post the websites and information I found that together formed my development.

To start with, I plan to have 1 project every week, preferably one that I can finish within the week. However, I might also try to keep up with longer term projects every time I make a new blog post. I have an excel file with these projects, indicating their urgency and difficulty, and where I will comment every time I pursie one of them on how it went etc. Examples:

- Finish a painting for my girlfriend - Read 10 pages from a textbook (Immunology) every day, 7 days in a row - Learn to change chords 40/min for all chords I know until now (A, Aminor, D, Dminor, E, Eminor, C and G) - Optimize the way I look. I am quite happy about it already: I’m pretty fit, decent hairdo, good clothing. However, I would like to improve it even further, maybe develop a style of my own. E.g. wear only shirts from now on (tiedies), wear only clothes that fit extremely well, use facial products e.g. to moisturize the skin etc. - Optimize work-out - Wake up at 6, go for a run 20min or so, meditate 10-20 min, go to work - Organize my academic papers and information - Run 10 km.. never done that, never managed even though I quite sportsy - Brew my own beer - Poetry booklet, including 10 poems. Might post this on this blog. :) - Start a blog! <<< Ding ding ding, 1 point. Next challenge: make a post every day, preferably in the morning before work. - Organize notitions / ideas in mobile phone - Organize google chrome bookmarks, maybe make summaries - Improve some cooking skills (cutting etc., special techniques) - Ask quora questions on improving life, e.g. on sleeping or how many times you have to shower (balance between hygiene and healthy skin) - Make a map of Switzerland, where I currently live, and indicate which hikes I have done and which hikes I’d still like to do - Study science behind music... still think there are algorhythms there to be found (probably already done by people more talented / into this field than me) - Singing techniques. I always thought I couldn’t sing, but as I started playing the guitar, approximately 12 months ago, I also became better at singing as I learned how to match the tune of the instrument - Write short stories - Improve my Python programming skills, make some small software design - Improve my writing skills (Working on it currently! ) - Read more papers, more reviews, in a structured manner - Try new sports, especially unusual/extreme ones. I’m slightly afraid of getting older (although I’m currently 25) and I realize that sitting behind my computer can still be done when I’m 70, as opposed (probably) to skydiving or windsurfing. Anyways, this blog is mostly for personal gain, but if I ever notice people start reading it I will try my very best to make it more structured and maybe even catered towards what people are interested in. Additionally, I might post new guitar music and songs whenever I master them. Might also post pictures of paintings I made etc. Best,

EtB