Life is a game. It’s my new mantra. I say it to myself when the unexpected happens. Unforeseen bills, emergencies, things breaking down, idiots to deal with, things not going to plan. The stuff that can induce anxiety and stress if you let it. Like losing your job then encountering sudden house or car repairs, medical bills, and price increases. All magnified by the lack of income coming in, all outgoing.
Before, this would all stress me out, but if I think of life as a big game of monopoly, it becomes more manageable. Some days you win, you receive a refund, a free coffee, a discount, a paid day off. Other days you encounter idiots that try to ruin your day, something breaks and is expensive to fix, or agreed contracts suddenly have fee increases. No passing go and collecting your free money today, it’s off to anxiety jail for you.
That’s life though. The more you are responsible for, the more opportunities for things to go wrong. So now I just roll with it. When today’s card is not a good one, play it and move on. Life is a game.
Figuring things out and the procrastination circle
Time off from work can be a great time to figure things out. What you want to do next, what type of job or role you might take on, or maybe an assessment of where you are in life and whether your priorities and dreams have changed.
The risk though is falling into what I call the procrastination circle. Or maybe not even a circle, an infinity symbol. Time quickly passing filled with TV watching, book reading, catching up on your to do list, time with friends and family, but with no real thinking or action being achieved. Before you know it, weeks, even months have passed and you haven’t figured anything out. No perceived progress has been made. You’ve been stuck in a procrastination loop.
To avoid the loop, set aside time to actively figure things out. That might be time for meditation, reflection, or introspection. Just go for a long walk, or sit somewhere pleasant where you can be alone with your thoughts. Ask yourself some tough questions. What do you want to do with your life next? What kind of work might you want to undertake? And so on.
Avoid the procrastination loop!
An end to banger racing?
The UK is planning on banning the manufacture of all ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars from 2030, followed by hybrids from 2035. Futurists are predicting that petrol and diesel cars will become rare so fuel stations will switch to becoming charging stations to meet demands, and obtaining fossil fuels will become harder and more costly. This will affect the classic car scene, car events, and bangers.
Banger racing is a popular sport in many countries, but it relies on access to ICE vehicles and fossil fuels to run them. You can’t really crash electric vehicles into each other as batteries have a tendency to catch fire or even explode.
So will this mean the end of bangers?
When fast food is no longer fast
I got the app for a popular fast food chain. It’s supposed to speed-up your order even more. Placed the order via the app, arrived, waited 35-minutes for the order. Tried it again, 25-minutes, then 40-minutes at 7pm! Tried the drive-thru, 20-minutes. How is that faster than going inside? Plus the fuel on idle if I wasn’t turning off my engine in the queue.
The food might be made fast but the service sure isn’t.
The art of letting go
There is an art to letting go.
I don’t mean in relation to people. I mean to ideas, goals, investments, and businesses that are just no longer working for you, or are making you unhappy, or are no longer providing or serving your original want.
As an example I created a web site some years ago as part of a business idea. I invested a lot of time and effort in it, but it became a chore. I held onto it thinking that it will do well soon, but it started costing me lots of time and money. Eventually I realised that my heart wasn’t in it any more. I’d lost interest and the drive to make it into something had gone. So I let it go. I shut it down and let the domain expire.
Another time I had this company that I started from scratch and built up into a fun business. Then circumstances changed and I made it dormant, effectively parking it for a while. But then a while became more than a year and I still had to pay fees and insurances even though it was not bringing in any money. I finally decided to let it go. I closed it down. It was both sad and freeing.
It has taken me a lot of practice but learning when to let something go is a useful skill. It’s not quitting, it’s knowing when something has come to an end and it is time to let it go.
I love board games
I love board games and often forget this with all the streams, video games, and books I have access to. One of the joys of having a family is that on occasion the board games cupboard gets opened and you remember what it is like to immerse yourself in the tactile world of board games with not a screen in sight.
I like the classics like Cluedo, Monopoly, and even the mechanical ones of the 1980s such as Don’t Upset Me, or Stay Alive. Both are rare to find these days, and the more popular ones have been remade as cheaper plastic replicas that don’t hold up to the slightest knock. Newer games such as Labyrinth, Enchanted Forest, and even the LOL Dolls game (don’t knock it untily you’ve played it). There’s even dedicated board game shops, if you can find them, with the popular Catalan and games you’ve never heard of and variations of Monopoly and Labyrinth.
Board games bring people together more than a stream or video game can. It can bring out your competitive side and there’s something about the feel of quality game pieces, tiles, cards, and the artwork involved. As a rule I try to buy one new board game every Christmas for the family. I do a lot of research, make my purchase, wrap it up and label it.
We’ve had some really obscure ones over the years and some that have become our new favourites. With each passing year our collection grows offering a wider selection on game night.
Do you play board games?
The here and now
I had a conversation recently with someone that knew they did not have long left. They had already beat the odds and now, in their early 90s, they were saying that any day that you get to wake up is a good day.
We were discussing a book author whose work we both enjoyed. Their next book won’t be out until next year and the chances of my conversation partner being around to read it were slim. What was interesting was his attitude. It didn’t bother him. He went on to explain that he had made peace with the end being near long ago and it was very liberating. “I’m not worried about being able to finish a book, a movie, TV series, whatever. I just enjoy it for what it is as long as it lasts now. If I never get to find out what happens in the end then that’s ok. That’s life. We never find out what happens in the end so just enjoy the present”.
It was a very sobering point. Putting life’s FOMO in its place. You are only missing out if you are not enjoying the here and now.
Prove it with a negative
There are various testing techniques used by the Quality Assurance and Penetration Testing professions known as blind testing. Essentially it is where you can’t see something to prove it exists, so you test it by feel, or by testing for an absence of something. For example there are database injection attacks that utilise time. You ask questions you know to be true, followed by ones that you know to be false. With each you measure the time taken for the question to be answered. If there is a measurable difference between the right and wrong ones then you can blind test something based on the time taken to answer your questions even if the response is a return of the prompt with no answer.
How often have you been asked to prove that something is not true? Someone states their argument as if it is gospel, providing no evidence whatsoever to back it up, and then demands that you prove them wrong. You have to do all the work (assuming that you disagree and wish to prove them wrong). In some cases it is impossible to prove, such as the statement that there is some higher being. How do you prove/disprove it?
There is also the practice of proving something with a negative. If all alternative options cannot be true then the assumption is that you have proven that the statement or thing being tested is true.
Can you be really good at more than one thing?
I’ve been told that if you split your time between more than one thing you’ll only ever be average at any one of them. Whether sports, career, or whatever it is you are focusing the majority of your time on, if you spread your time and effort you will never be really good at any one thing.
Really?
I disagree. We can all be good at more than one thing, and the art of mastery has been disproven. Instead, I would propose that you will get good at whatever you spend the most time on. If you procrastinate, watch too much TV, laze about, then that is how you have chosen to spend your time and you will get good at doing that. Alternatively, if you spend your time learning something and practicing it, then over time you will get better and better at it. It’s common sense: whatever you feed will grow.
That doesn’t mean that you can only focus on one thing. There’s nothing stopping us from focusing on more than one thing, at different times. It may take longer but we can still become really good at more than one thing. It all comes down to time management and where you apply your focus.
Traffic shapers
I’ve found myself stuck in traffic recently, and each time I noticed a type of driver that I like to refer to as the traffic shaper.
You arrive at what appears to be a traffic jam, only to get through it and find absolutely no reason for it having occured. Whatever caused the original traffic jam has long gone but its affect was long lasting. The wave of traffic slowing to a crawl, travelling in first gear for some distance, them speeding up again takes time to smooth out back to a normal traffic flow.
Traffic shapers are people that try to speed-up the smoothing process by slowing down early, keeping a large gap between them and the vehicle in front, and then aiming to keep moving at a slow pace but never stopping if they can help it. The aim is to smooth out the traffic to avoid the waves of stopping and starting to try and remove the traffic pulses.
It’s a fine art and can take some practice. You’ll get the odd annoying driver who overtakes you and pulls into the gap you are leaving, messing up your shaping of the traffic. The trick is not to give up. It also breaks up the manotany of being in a traffic jam.
Next time you are stuck in traffic look out for traffic shapers. There are plenty of us around.