2011 is coming to an end, which means its time for me to reflect back on the year, so I can prepare for what’s up ahead. 2011′s developments and significant events fell within 6 key themes:
1) Systems
Systems are tremendously important for me I’ve realized, as they provide a means for me to consistently make sure that myself and my environment are meeting my needs.
I developed a system this year that requires little effort to measure how I use my time, to help me use my time effectively, and to help me consistently reflect back on my experiences (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.) This practice of reflection is vital to the full extraction of meaning from my experience.
The project known as “the Performance League” (the name is supposed to be a bit funny) gained a lot of traction. The original inspiration is that the people we connect ourselves to define us, and therefore, we should connect ourselves to other great people. Thus I created the League to consistenly expose myself to people that can help me grow, just by spending 90 minutes a week talking with them (and doing other activities together as opportunities arise). This has proven to be a significant part of my life. It has allowed me to make more friends and better friends. And this is just the beginning.
I decided to challenge myself and my physical performance by laying outside some pretty serious physical strength goals. This required me to get together a system for tracking my progress in the weight room and making sure I got in the weight room on a consistent basis. Every workout I see myself improve over the previous. (When I say system here, it really comes down to a few sheets of paper that holds a clear routine with space for writing down what weights were lifted and how many times. It’s amazing what a little investment in a piece of paper can do.) I’ve gotten good results already. I’m at a good baseline strength level and my body feels really good. I’m also in good shape when it comes to playing basketball.
As a part of my physical strength challenge, I created a nutrition system for making sure I was eating enough, as this is a key. This system broke down when it became clear how devastating carbohydrates can be to my mental acuity and energy levels. Version 2 is still in the works, but a significant flaw in the system has been exposed, and it’s down to me taking a few hours to figure out how I can better structure my eating such that my calorie intake is high enough, energy levels are high, and my mental clarity is maintained. (I also discovered in this process that fasting is a useful tool for managing attention.)
2) Environment
I was able to alter my environment in some favorable ways. The key change was my living space.
I moved out of my solo workspace/living arrangement, and decided to become a residential advisor in one of the MIT fraternities. I grew up in a house that had 6 kids, I then moved into a fraternity in college with 40 interesting people around me. After graduating, I found living with a few people quite dull and lonely. I like having people around to meet and get to know, and just hang out with whenever i feel moved to do so. Being a residential advisor works well, since the fraternity is full of a lot of good guys trying to find their path, and I’m also able, from time to time, use my experience and network to provide some help to them. Meeting new people and using my resources to help people are extremely important to me.
Of course, I won’t be able to be a residential advisor forever. Which makes me wonder, how will I create a similar environment for myself that blends life, work, people, and fun in the future? These things can be figured out, and I have a few good ideas. But I know this is what I want, and I will have it.
3) Focus
I learned to better control my energies and inspirations. I was able to turn away really good ideas and interesting opportunities. This is hard. For instance, I was excited to teach a night class at Tufts University and nearly did so, but I realized that this was not fully in line with my goals and current priorities. So I decided to back out. (And that course would have been effing awesome by the way. why aren’t there more of me teaching classes out there??)
There were also numerous other great things I chose not to try out. Once or twice, I found myself with too many goals and challenges, and I was not afraid to just wipe them all out and get back to focusing on 2 or 3 things. My goal development seems to follow an evolutionary process — I have many inspirations and challenges to take on and then I knock out all the ones that should not survive. Being able to be ruthless about this will be absolutely essential for me. And so gaining this power was a huge development.
Over the last 2 years, I’ve learned not only that it’s important to turn away great ideas to stay focused, but I’ve also found that the ability to do this well is what separates the good from the Great. My intuition is that I’m learning to do this quite well.
4) New Experiences
I did a lot of cool stuff this year, and I did quite a few new things.
I travelled down to Miami for the Ultra Music Festival. I’ve really enjoyed electronic music for a while, and was one of the early adopters of the genre. But this experience made me realize how much I love it. I’ll write a post on it sometime instead of going on here. I also went to Electric Zoo, another electronic music festival in New York City.
I finally saw my youngest brother play a football game. It was extremely exciting. For a long time, we assumed he probably wouldn’t play football and would maybe avoid the idea of walking in the shadow of his older brothers. Surprise. The kid doesn’t worry about this at all, does what he does, is 6’4”, fast, strong, and a really good defensive end. I’m proud of him.
I saw my next younger brother play in a DI college football game for the first time. He plays for Wake Forest, and doesn’t play a lot yet since he’s a redshirt freshman that just got moved to linebacker. But, I got to see him out on the field for the first time this year, and it was extremely exciting. I didn’t expect it to be as awesome as it was. (I also got to show him around Boston when the team came up to play against BC at Boston College.)
I saw my sister graduate from high school. She’s beautiful and will be going to college for free.
We took a rare family vacation down to Universal Studios and saw Harry Potter world.
I created my first dynamic website using Python and had a number of scripts up on a server collecting data 24/7. And while I ended up killing off the project (though it will probably resurrect again), this was a very satisfying experience to learn these things and gain these capabilities.
I won a deal and negotiated the contract which lead to an entity handing my company a $500,000 check. This is an important experience. Most of us spend our lives scrapping for pennies in comparison. Going through the experience and realizing that there are entities that will actually hand you a half a million dollars in return for a service or product was more significant than I had thought. A bit eye-opening I suppose.
5) Death
Our neighbor, a young mother of two, died very quickly from cancer.
A friend of the family committed suicide.
The mother of a friend of mine, who I spent a lot of time with, committed suicide.
A good friend of mine took his life.
The day after learning of my friend’s death, I learned that my Grandmother had passed away.
These were the first deaths of people close to me that I had experienced in my conscious life (my maternal grandfather passed away the day after I was born — in a controversial fashion, my baptism and his funeral were held at the same mass).
Time moves quickly, running through our fingers. This has weighed heavily on me for a while. And whether I live for 1 more year or 80 more years, I don’t have a long time to live. It is a short amount of time.
Some people avoid thinking about these things or work themselves up into a tiz if it ever comes up. It is what it is in my view. People get more done when they have hard deadlines to meet. It seems to me one will live more when they know there are hard deadlines as well.
And I don’t know what happens after death, or what could happen after death, and this doesn’t scare me, but this year has been a reminder to me to find a way to build heaven on earth, enjoy the challenge of doing so, and soak it all up while I’m here.
6) Mastery of Living
Although it could be otherwise, it seems to me there are a lot of miserable people in the world and quite a few people that are just “happy enough” that accept their burdens. There are relatively few that seem to live lives full of enrichment, passion, and purpose. The point is, in my view, we just aren’t that good at living.
My goal is to become a Master of Living. (Yep, you heard me.) And I believe I’ve made substantial progress in this area this year. It’s come in a number of ways.
Energy
As far as I can tell, Living is similar to making things. It’s very hard to make something great. And it’s very easy to tear down something great. Everything has a tendency to fall apart–Entropy finds a way to creep in. Cynicism, negativity, doing the wrong thing, these are the defaults, unless adequate energy is invested.
A key question is then, “how can I maximize my time and energy so I can build a great life?”
This is where the aforementioned Systems and Environment come in and a better understanding of my ideal rhythm of life. I’ve been able to improve my energy and concentration levels substantially.
Knowledge
I think reading is often over-valued, with too much time spent in reading books as opposed to going out and doing things. I also think there is a ton of garbage out there, and it’s easy to waste your time reading garbage. But, I managed to find a few gems that proved to be helpful in this pursuit.
Most notably, I discovered two books by Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi — Flow and Creativity. These books contained little I did not already know. However, they did more fully articulate some of my own observations and helped me better structure some of my own experiences and order my consciousness such that I was able to grow in my understanding. I also was able to learn more about the experiences of other people that are a bit similar to myself–that want to make significant contributions–and found it helpful to understand their lives. I will be writing summaries of both these books and sharing them.
I spent some time studying the lives of men that have been a part of important contributions to human consciousness. Men like Walt Disney, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Richard Feynman, and John Rockefeller. It has been helpful to understand the narrative structure of their lives, what things work well, and what the common mistakes are. Studying gthe stories of other people can be extremely valuable, if you remember that these stories are often glamorized and can study them through the right lens.
I also read two other books: LogiComix and Quantum, that proved to provide me with some key insights about the learning process, relationships, and how the human race moves forward. LogiComix follows the plight of the Logicians who attempted to ground Mathematics on a consistent set of rules. Quantum charts the story of the physicists who tried to unravel the mysteries of the quantum world of the atom, and better understand the fabric of reality. Both of these stories are examples of how communities work together and progress forward, and how interconnected the key players were, the journey they went on together, and how they discovered something great and unexpected.
The role of community is under-estimated and under-utilized.
But reading these books would be nothing without my own personal experiences that went along with them.
Commitment
An important development this year was that I found myself with the ability and emotional readiness to commit to things and love things. For instance, at the beginning of the year, even if I may have had the skills to figure things out, I don’t think I would’ve emotionally been ready to do something like commit to starting my own business and making the necessary multi-year commitment to turn it into something great. The ability to apply commitment wisely is important.
The Details
I got much better at getting the details right, largely because I’ve started to appreciate the joys that the intricacies of life can offer.
Conclusion
The year has been a success. I grew, and a lot of awesome things happened. However, there are still some major holes to fill, and there were too many things that left a bad taste in my mouth. However, I controlled and influenced what I could, and I got a lot right. My life has improved significantly, and I can look towards 2012 with excitement and a good understanding of what needs to happen in what could be the beginning of my first great Act.
-Kevin
12.23.2011
