steel blue

[11] On social rat races and the joy of relaxed blogging

2011-06-05T19:28:00.001+02:00

Why blogging is good for the mind and social networking is not.
There was a time when I was rather excited about social networks. During that period, day by day, in parallel to my professional brain work, I was consuming, processing and creating a steady stream of diverse information within my online community. My mind had readily adapted to this 21st century selection pressure and compulsively evaluated each tiny new micro event of my life for its potential usability in a quick tweet or in one of the next essays. And the number of feeds to scan through, the number of information items to share with the community, the number of comments to reply to, was growing all the time - never shrinking. My spare time became just as energy-consuming than my working hours.

And then, after a final post at Sep.8, 2009, I suddenly realized how very unhealthy this way of living was. Riding on a towering wave of disgust, I quitted all online activities that were not absolutely critical for my job, in particular those social networks that made me feel guilty when I didn’t immediately react on any new information snippet popping up at my screen. Basically, I stayed “socially offline” until today, with a brief exception during the first days of the Tohoku earthquake.

This is not to say that I spent less time in front of my screen since then. I am still a kind of information junky. But the difference is that now, with a proper timing and frequency, I allow myself to surf the net, or to satisfy my hunter-and-gatherer instincts and download thousands of PDF-documents that I will probably never open again. My general way to use the web turned from an externally driven, compulsory rat race towards a more voluntary, pleasure-full, relaxing activity.

Of course, my self-control (yes, I belief this concept is making sense even after what we know today about how the brain works) with regard to web use is still far from perfect. It still happens occasionally that after a long surfing session I feel that it was a waste of time and become angry with myself. But I am improving my awareness, little by little.

And surfing the web is, fundamentally, a highly self-controlled activity: Each mouse-click on a new link, after all, is your own decision. You are walking through the information landscape along your own hiking path. Compared to that freedom of choice, a typical social feed is like TV: You passively wait until, hopefully, an interesting bit of information comes by. And all the not so interesting bits must be endured patiently, sucking energy, little by little changing your mind state and mood in ways you cannot control.

Even better than surfing the web, of course, is blogging. Not micro-blogging, but good old traditional blogging. As is known since centuries, writing a longer coherent piece of text can have a very positive effect on our mind state. Writing down a train of interrelated thoughts, with a clear thematic focus maintained for a substantial period, creates almost the opposite mind state than the participation in typical social online conversations with so many different voices. It leaves you concentrated, steady and peaceful.

Therefore I decided to partially resume my online activities and allow myself to write a little essay from time to time. Just idiosyncratic opinions on random topics, written simply for the joy of the process. No need this time for a fixed rate of “text output”. No need to continue that path for long. No obligations whatsoever.

[10] Downgrading, or temporal digressions from simplicity

2010-02-19T18:06:00.003+01:00

I remember an old Zen story about a monk whose dinnerware consisted merely of a single wooden bowl that he used for multiple purposes. One day, someone gave him a metal drinking cup. The monk accepted the kind offer and was happy with it for some time. However, soon it turned out that the new cup made a loud noise when moving around with it. At this point, the monk gave away the metal cup and continued using the wooden bowl only.

I recently had a similar experience. I kept using "Treepad Lite" as a personal information manager for quite some time. This is a freeware program that functionally replaces the card box systems of old times. It served me for bundling my countless small notes and memos in a single, searchable file. Its editor features are extremely limited: You cannot even use bold face or different font sizes in the same document. There came a day when I wanted the much richer set of functions of the "Plus" version - and so I purchased it. Once I had it, I immediately started to "improve" my old notes by using the new editing features. This process took quite some time - and it was totally useless: The essential information content of a text simply does not change by editing a view words to bold face or by indenting some sentences. Once I realized that the new possibilities just diverted my mind from the really important things, I actually deleted the "Plus" version from my computer and downgraded to "Lite". I am happily using it since then.

[9] Toxic and nourishing relationships

2009-05-12T14:37:00.002+02:00

Recently I discovered Milton Glaser's essay called "10 things I've learned". Two of his remarks I found particularly fitting to my personal experience:

I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. ...
That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle....

.. in all relationships people [can] be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences...

Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, ..... at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished.

[8] The dictate of novelty

2009-05-12T14:25:00.001+02:00

The dictate of novelty for scientific projects is a damned creativity blocker.

When thinking about some new science problems, I am each time terribly anxious about the possibility that everything has been done already.

It has happened so often in the past: Working hard on a new project for weeks, producing nice results. And then you find a paper, hidden in some remote corner of the web, which is unbelievably similar ! Convergent evolution. At least one of the 6 billion rival humans had a similar idea before. Always.

Sure, there will be small differences between two independent approaches to the problem, but referees of high-rank journals will point to the similarities ! It is so frustrating when you don't feel free to think into any direction you want !

Imagine a jazz musician afraid to play a phrase because it might have been played before ! A cook who can't re-use the same recipe twice !

Any advice how to overcome that mind blocking state ?

[7] Is autonomous working completely out-of-date now ?

2009-05-12T14:23:00.001+02:00

Sorry, is autonomous working completely out-of-date now ?

I am feeling more and more like an ego-centric oddball in this social networking society. Everybody is only connecting to other people all the time. Communication seems to be the solution to all problems.

I wonder: Who is doing the actual work ?

In my scientific education as a theoretical physicist, I was trained to do things by my own.

If I need some new methods not yet in my repertoire, I first absorb the knowledge to the point that I can freely use it and adapt it to my special problems. I do this by looking up suitable papers in the web, not by asking specialists.

If I encounter a problem in a project, I am thinking hard, for days and weeks if neccessary (OK, I admit that in such a period an arbitrary remark of another person can sometimes trigger helpful new thoughts. But first I think myself).

My whole motivation of doing theoretical physics is the JOY this work brings to me. I love thinking. I love solving problems in my own way.

Therefore I am deeply disapppointed each time I find that another person has already solved a problem similar to mine. Modern networkers, in contrast, would be happy in such a case because somebody has already solved the problem for them.

Is something wrong with me ?

It is not that I am completely anti-social. For example, I enjoy very much to play in my Jazz band, and this is a very intense form of direct collaboration with the co-musicians.

Comparing the creation of music with the creation of mathematical models, the latter process seems to correspond best to autonomous composing, not collective improvising. In my opinion, a musical composition should have a coherent mood and style. How could this monolithic quality ever be achieved in a collaborative creation process ?

[6] The peace of a million year's meditation

2009-05-12T14:21:00.000+02:00

When listening recently to Carla Brennan's talk "Nothing To Do" in AudioDharma, I was moved by her remark on the particular atmosphere that nature provides. She said something like:

If you are coming late to a silent meditation retreat which has already been going on for a while, you feel that a "field" has been created by the people that immediately takes you into a deep state of concentration. If you go out into nature, it is like a meditation retreat that has been going on for a million of years.

[5] Control Loops

2009-03-15T15:40:00.024+01:00

For a large part, living means seeking goals.

At this and any other moment, sophisticated regulatory mechanisms in your organism are striving to keep physiological parameters, like body temperature, blood sugar level and countless other concentrations of chemicals, within a healthy range. Your organism is seeking the goal of healthiness, a state which is constantly threatened by many influences.

When you walk to the fridge for a drink (say, in order to satisfy an extra demand of water due to that salty pizza you ate before), a continuous stream of input signals from various types of sensory cells (eyes, equilibrium organ in the ear, ..) is processed by your nervous system and transformed into an output stream of muscle activating nerve signals. The activated muscles then create forces, change the body posture, and the effect is again monitored by the sensory cells. So there is a control loop from sensors to actors to the environment and back to the sensors. As a result of this control, your mechanically instable body does not tumble or hit any obstacles and simultaneously keeps approaching the fridge. This is goal-seeking, intelligent behavior - one of the big differences between living beings and inert matter.

All this happens automatically and normally does not require any conscious planing. But what about the more long-term goals in our life, such as reducing body weight, getting a project done, or becoming a happier person ? Why are such higher-level goals sometimes so hard to achieve ? Is there some fundamental difference between walking to the fridge and successfully finishing a complex long-term project ?

The question of how goals can be achieved, in a very general and abstract scope, has been considered in the scientific discipline of cybernetics, already many decades ago. Unfortunately, cybernetics did not survive as a coherent research field, but its ideas are alive and continue to evolve in different branches of modern science.

One of the most fundamental concepts of cybernetics is the feedback control loop. It is most often explained by the example of a temperature control systems of a house:

The feedback control system consists of a sensor, a goal, a processor, and actors. In our example, the temperature sensor measures the inside temperature of the house. The processor constantly compares this actual temperature with the goal temperature, which has to be set by the user in advance. If the actual temperature is lower than the goal value, the processor turns on a heating device (actor 1). If the temperature is too high, the processor activates a cooling device (actor 2).

This simple reactive control scheme has many great features. In particular, it does not require any understanding of the many possible reasons that may disturb the inside temperature of the house, such as outside weather changes, doors left open for too long, etc.. The feedback controller is monitoring only a single goal variable and applies one of only two actions whenever appropriate. In contrast, a control system based on prevention instead of reaction (also called feed-forward control) would have to take into account all those possible disturbances and provide selective counter measures for each of them.

Another advantage of feedback control is that it works even without any pre-arranged step-by-step plan of how to achieve the goal (Anyway, such detailed plans often fail in reality because there can occur completely unexpected problems in complex environments). Instead, it is often sufficient to re-evaluate the situation after each step, and to have at least one action available that brings one closer to the goal. Such an open strategy is much more robust than detailed planing.

Of course, feedback control also has its problems in practice. The corrective actions against some perturbation may come too late, or they may be in-appropriate in size: Both, too weak and too strong counter measures have to be avoided. It is therefore not surprising that optimum control theory is a rather complex field in applied mathematics.

Now, how can this concept of feedback control be applied to the case of the "higher-level" goals that we pursue in our lives ?

Let me start with a concrete example. During my 1.5 years long stay in California, I had developed overweight. After my return to Germany, I decided to reverse that trend by reducing the overall amount of food and by completely giving up a few particularly problematic habits (potato chips, etc.). Except these very few bad habits, there was no need to improve the quality of my daily food, since I was already a fan of healthy Asian dishes. I just got used to somewhat smaller portions. Also, I didn't do any sports (it only makes me hungry).

Over a little more than a year I successfully reduced my weight by 16 kg, and then I kept my goal weight for about 5 years. Then I lost control for a while and quickly gained 5 kg, but since the beginning of this year I applied the same fasting method and was able to bring my weight back to the goal value.

In retrospect, I realize that the success of this method was due to a few crucial design principles.

One success principle is the gradual effect of small persistent steps. I did not have to reduce the portions of my food by much, only by 1/3 or so. After a surprisingly short time I was getting used to the new standard amount of nourishment. I wondered why I ever needed to eat that much before. But the body still reacts, if the slight reduction is persistently maintained over a long period. I will write about the power of the gradual in another post (drop by drop).

But clearly, the main success principle was the establishment of a control loop:

A definite goal weight was set up in advance, the actual weight was monitored, and the available counter actions were a reduction or increase of the daily food portions.

This sounds trivial, just like ordinary fasting. But a key point for me was to take the monitoring of the actual weight very seriously. I bought a digital scale with 100g resolution and measured my weight EVERY morning at the same time, before the first sip of coffee. And I drew a graph of my weight as a function of time and looked at it at the beginning of each new day.

By looking regularly at this curve, you learn a lot about yourself.

You realize that there is a certain random component, which keeps fluctuating up and down, seemingly without correlation to your eating and drinking habits. It is important to get a feel for the size of these random fluctuations, in order not to be fooled by them.

But there is also a very clear deterministic component. With the time, you will see the effects of your behavior during the day before very clearly. Usually, even a slight breaking of your self-established rules will show up next morning. A persistent fasting period of a whole week can be destroyed (at least temporarily) by a single day of loosened control. This clear feedback, however, helps you to avoid such rule-breaking in the future, especially if you write down an explicit note that "behavior X has led to the undesired result Y" and read that note regularly.

On the other hand: What a pleasant and reassuring experience it is to observe a persistent downward trend in your weight curve over several weeks ! This is, after all, a direct, physical manifestation of sustained will power ! It shows that your method is actually working and that you can probably reach your goal by simply following this path further.

I strongly recommend to really draw such a progress curve, rather than just reading the list of weight numbers. The graphical representation is so much more impressive !

So, what we can learn from this successful implementation of a control loop is the importance of a clear monitoring of the effects of our actions. I think that applies for other long-term projects as well: You need to precisely measure and document your progress, or lack of progress, and it must be clear which actions (or missed actions) have caused which effects.

Unfortunately, this can be very difficult in more complex endeavors. Sometimes projects go wrong in a way that is hard to analyze and quantify.

For example, I repeatedly failed in bringing my research projects to a fruitful ending (meaning to write a publication). The reason was not that I couldn't find good solutions to the given problems, but rather that each solution was leading to a couple of new interesting questions. These new questions were often leading into a different - and much more exciting - direction, so that the original questions suddenly appeared quite inadequate and boring. With my mind already drawn into the new problem solving process, I completely forgot about the publication of the intermediate results. And so on and on.

Writing now about this silly behavioral pattern, it all appears obvious to me. But while in the actual process of research, one usually lacks the necessary distance and overview. One not even recognizes immediately that something is going wrong. One is completely absorbed in fascinating small problems.

In other words: There is no clear monitoring of overall progress.

In the present example, a proper goal would be a REGULAR publication of the results of one's scientific work. It is important to formulate the goal in a way that can be accomplished in practice. So, the goal is NOT to wait with the publication until the research projects will reach a self-contained state of perfect satisfaction, because one NEVER comes to a point where all aspects are 100% satisfying. It would be much better to impose oneself a strict time limit for the actual research work and then publish the present state of the project, no matter how many open questions remain.

Then, in the publication phase, the writing of the manuscript can be divided into smaller sub-tasks (e.g., individual sections or figures). One simply has to write a to-do list and finish point after point.

Again, the great danger here is that while writing the manuscript, one becomes increasingly aware of all the shortcomings of one's work. But now it is essential to remember the higher goal of regular publication and to resist the urge to improve the work by further research. Once a master plan has been thoroughly set up, one should stick to it.

As it often happens, also this little wisdom can be illustrated using the world of music. As a musician, one has only a limited time to learn and practice. This limited musical experience one brings onto the stage in a live performance. During the performance, one has to make the best out of these resources. It is useless to try to make up for shortcomings just a few hours before the show. AFTER the show there is time for new learning and improvement.

At the end of this post (I have set myself a strict time limit although the article is still far from perfect), I would like to invite the reader to figure out a control loop for the meta goal of becoming a happier person. How can we monitor the various aspects of our mental state over time ? Which of our actions are particularly relevant to change this mental state ? What are the perturbations like and what is your available set of counter measures ?

[4] Bubbles of Peace

2009-02-15T11:43:00.019+01:00

Are you wondering about the headline ? Not the slightest idea what it stands for ?

Well, I am sorry for that. But once this strange B.o.P. phrase popped into my head, I really came to like it because of its sensual and emotional quality. For me, it creates a relaxed atmosphere and evokes beautiful images of light-reflecting air bubbles within blue water. I mentally hear some pleasant phasing sound as they rise and eventually burst at the surface. B.o.P. also has connotations of impermanence, fragility, and includes an idea of "protected inner space". And therefore B.o.P. became my private code for certain 2009's New Year's Resolutions.

Actually, B.o.P. stands for a way to improve one's personal working experience and quality by cultivating a different mind set. The idea of B.o.P. gradually emerged when I tried to implement the "Getting Things Done" (GTD) method in my daily life.

When looking at my to-do-list every morning, I noticed that it is often difficult to decide which projects to work on and how much time to devote to each of them. Of course, there are those short tasks, such as reading and answering emails, which are best done immediately in order to keep the in-box empty. Then, again, there are urgent tasks with hard deadlines that have higher priority than anything else. But - at least in my happy life as a theoretical physicist - there are also periods where I have quite a large freedom in designing my working schedule. And this freedom of choice can be very tantalizing !

Usually and unavoidably, I am involved in several long time projects at any time. I am struggling hard to keep them all going. And I try, not always successfully, to produce some publishable results out of them. But the fractional amount of time and energy each individual project receives depends on many conditions.

It is relatively easy for me to stick to a project when I collaborate closely with students or other scientist friends. In such cases I feel a personal responsibility to bring the shared project to a fruitful end. In addition, the mere joy of striving with other people for a common goal is a great motivator. But there are also long periods where I have to work alone. And then the distribution of energy to the various projects becomes a problem.

I have tried out some extreme solutions to the choice problem.

Solution A: Just devote all the working hours to only one project at a time, until it is finished. This single-tasking approach sounds simple and effective. However, the human psyche is not programmable so easily. When you continuously work on some theory project for a long time (an adventure similar to an explorative hike in unknown wild territory), sooner or later you will meet some obstacles. You get stuck. You start to feel angry, frustrated. Doubts appear in your mind whether the path you are on is not a dead end.

In such moments it really helps to work on another project for a while, to draw some success-feelings from another source. But on top of the "getting stuck" problem, extreme single tasking has the other disadvantage that all your other projects lie dormant for a substantial period. You will start to forget the necessary details of each problem little by little, in the worst case even loose your initial motivation entirely. And while you are single-tasking your only active project, in the back of your mind you feel the other projects slowly dying.

Solution B: Stop committing yourself consciously to any particular project. Let yourself drift. Start working randomly on various topics and hope that one of them grabs your attention strongly for a long enough time to make some progress. Actually, this solution is close to the spirit of the GTD method, which suggests that the momentary circumstances (in cybernetic language: affordances and perturbations) normally favor one particular tasks of the to-do list.

Well, in my personal experience such complete freedom of choice makes me attracted each time by the project which appears most pleasant at the moment. This is usually the latest one, still exciting with its many unexplored directions and yet free of disappointments. Following the pleasant way each time, all the not-so-pleasant but possibly more important tasks remain undone. Sometimes, the mood-based scheduling method will even fail completely and leave you drifting around for hours. And then, at the end of the day, nothing has been achieved.

Conclusion: We want to see all projects advance at least a small step every (other) day. This can be achieved by a balanced multi-tasking approach. Here, "multi-tasking" means that every project should re-appear periodically in your schedule, separated by not too large time intervals. "Balanced" means that the number of different projects squeezed into a single working day should be modest, so that the mental effort connected with switching between topics remains bearable. Also, we want to be able to focus long enough on each individual topic, in a contiguous time span without interruptions, in order to make a significant progress.

Obviously, there is a trade-off between the above requirements. Everybody will have to find out his or her personal limits. In my case, I found that the maximum number of different projects per day should not exceed 3 and that each contiguous working time unit should only be about 30 minutes long. Since my working day is longer than 3 x 30min, I often spontaneously devote several 30min-units to the same topic within a single working day. But in such cases there has to be a clear break between each unit. And it must always be made sure that all the different projects scheduled for the day will actually be covered.

In order to make such a balanced multi-tasking approach practicable, however, it has to be supported by certain psychological techniques. In the long run, you will only implement new habits into your life that make you feel better. And this is where the B.o.P. idea comes into play.

For me, each 30min-unit is a bubble of peace.

Before the actual unit starts, I make sure that I have optimum working conditions for that particular project. All the necessary material must be available for immediate access. At the same time, all possible disturbances must be prevented: There should be no distracting clutter on the physical and PC desktops. Quiet room, comfortable atmosphere, relaxed body position.

And relaxed mind: Since the scheduling method automatically takes care of my overall project management, there are no more worries lingering in the back of my mind about all the other things I should remember or want to achieve. At the time being, the present 30min B.o.P. is all that counts. Just 30min to focus entirely on a single topic.

But is 30min not way too short to make any significant progress ? In my experience, it is actually very difficult to keep focused for much longer than half an hour. Did you ever try to meditate ? Just focusing on your breathing, without other thinking, for more than a few minutes ? Of course, it is considerably easier to focus on an interesting project, compared with just breathing. In a B.o.P., after all, it is completely OK to follow the flow of your ideas about the project.

But, what makes a B.o.P. more challenging, we want to have at least a tiny progress at the end of the unit, if possible. Since time is so limited, you are really motivated to make the best out of every second. This sounds like stressful time pressure, but I found that you can turn that time limitation into an advantage: You have to keep that very intense working level for just half an hour. After that you can relax. Then you even HAVE TO relax, because a clear break is mandatory after each unit. So, before that, why not try to get something done ?

Inside the bubble, you are protected from the chaos and the disturbances of the outer world. The bubble brings you peace of mind. And each B.o.P. is also like a miniature version of life. A fresh new opportunity. And when it is finally over, a new one will be born for sure ...

[3] Atmosphere

2009-01-29T21:50:00.019+01:00

I have a tendency to develop fixed habits rather quickly. For example, when I use some restaurant for the first time and happen to choose a dish that I really like, then there is a high probability that I will visit the same place and order precisely the same dish over and over again in the future.

This (unconscious) strategy has certainly some advantageous effects. First, it reduces the mental effort and pain connected with decision making (Did you notice that many women, more often than men, tend to take an enormous amount of time for studying menu cards ? And often, immediately after having ordered, they already come to regret their decision because they see this super-delicious looking plate being served at the neighboring table :-).

Also, once-and-for-all decisions guaranty a certain level of satisfaction, at least for a limited period. Unfortunately, however, the world is due to constant transformation: With the time, the general quality of the restaurant's food may get worse, due to economic pressure. Also, our own taste preferences will gradually change. And quite generally, our human mind is evaluating things on a relative, not on an absolute basis. What was a great new source of happiness yesterday becomes the standard of tomorrow. What makes us happy is positive CHANGE.

So, on the one hand, habits are a wonderful thing. What makes up our personality is, after all, a certain collection of regular behavioral patterns, ways of thinking, ways of talking and acting - habits. But those habits have a finite natural life time. Some of them may last for all our life, others feel great for only a few days and then quickly loose fascination (Know this nice picture of life as a long rope made of many short threads ?). Thanks to this gradual change of our habits, life can be experienced as fresh again and again.

And that brings me to the point of this article: Just as with all our habits, we also need a change of atmosphere from time to time. We tend to choose the same environment for regular activities, such as our daily work. And we might forget to re-evaluate if this environment is still as conductive to our activity as it was in the beginning.

Atmosphere is much more important than we might realize. For example, I re-read some of my favorite books after many years. It can then happen, in the middle of a certain passage, that I remember precisely the environment I was in at the time of my last reading: Often a rather unremarkable place and situation, like waiting for somebody in a car on a parking lot. But still, my mind has somehow made a firm connection between the story in the book and this particular atmosphere.

As another example, I realized that I play piano in a quite different way when the piano faces a window with a nice view. You can also try an experiment and listen to a slow, sad Jazz ballad once in a sunny room and once at night. The song may sound nice both times, in a certain way, but the emotions evoked in your mind will be very different.

Only a small part of the activity in our brain comes to the surface of consciousness. And even if we are consciously focused on some kind of problem solving or creative activity, the atmosphere of our surroundings is entering our brain through our sense organs and does have some effect, subtle as it may be.

Always choosing the same surroundings for our activities can lead to a lack of external stimulus and thereby make us less creative. We may believe that our creative ideas are coming "from inside ourselves". In reality, we are just picking up things from our environment, constantly. These tiny inputs leave some subtle traces in our brains and later they re-surface in form or another.

Thus, my recommendation is to change working environment from time to time. Of course, the equipment required for the work might not be so easy to transport - just think of moving around a piano ! But, in modern life, most gadgets like computers and phones have become lightweight and mobile. And sometimes it may be a good idea to come back to a simple paper and pencil.

Try reading and working in another room than normally, in the garden, in a park, in coffee shop ! It is no coincidence that so many writers used coffee shops for enhancing their creativity. Alternatively, you might change the atmosphere of your standard working place. Have the aroma of a nice hot drink in your nose to change your mind. Enjoy the sight of a delicious cup of green tea on your office desk. Optimize the light conditions: It makes such a huge psychological difference what kind of illumination is being used for each specific purpose. Whenever appropriate, use a suitable BGM for your activity (It is really a kind of art to know which type of music fits to which activity. Often, silience is the best choice. But I also keep a set of selected songs which serve as proven mood-changers for the not-so-good days). Or simply think of buying a new paper block or pencil. Remember how nice is feels to write with a high quality pen or pencil on a high quality paper....

I like to think of it that way: Our daily environment is an extension of our personality to the outside world. And just as we try to cultivate our mind, we should also cultivate our physical surroundings.

[2] U-Resolution: The joy of unplugged teaching

2009-01-22T19:36:00.020+01:00

Back in the eighties, when I was still attending lectures as a physics student in Germany, my professors were simply writing their stuff on the black board. Occasionally they would also place handwritten slides on an overhead projector, but that was it.

In a physics lecture, mathematical formula are the primary way to express ideas, together with short textual remarks and some diagrams. The overhead projectors were only necessary to present more complicated figures, but some of the professors were actually very good in drawing even tough figures by hand.

Later, after I myself had become a university teacher, the use of pre-fabricated slides was already standard and, finally, the notebook computer with beamer took over. Powerpoint presentations seemed a great way to get through a lot of stuff, quickly, and to enhance lectures with refined, colorful figures, videos and amazing computer simulations.

But did that technology really pay off ?

Alas, how much time I was spending, during the preparation of such presentations, for arranging each single page in an esthetically appealing way, for drawing perfectly clear figures, for seeking suitable videos on the web, for solving small technical problems ! And then, when the lecture finally came, a figure that had taken me more than ten minutes to draw was shown in 10 seconds ! And while rushing through all the material, simultaneously trying to talk and operating multiple windows on the computer desktop, I was stressed and had a feeling that all this great effort was, after all, in vain.

And then came a day when I decided to get unplugged in the lecture room. I did still print out some really undrawable figures as handouts for the students, but I didn't use any computer or overhead. I did prepare myself as thoroughly as before, but I restricted my script to a mere topic list and a few data and names which were hard to remember. I made no plan what to write on the whiteboard in which precise order. And then I walked into the lecture room with nothing but a few pieces of paper.

What a relieve ! First of all, there was no longer this annoying background noise of the computer's and beamer's air fan. Plus, the window blinds of the room could be left open during all the time, allowing refreshing day light to shine in. And, without any gadgets, there were no more distractions from the only thing that counts: explaining physics, slowly, carefully, in continuous interaction with the students, always adapting to the present situation. There was an air of concentration that I had not experienced since a long time ago. I felt relaxed, being able to think as I wrote things to the board. In the end, I could cover only half of the prepared material, which means a considerable reduction of preparation time in the future. And the best of all: The next day students told me that they really appreciated the "new" teaching style.

Looking back, I realized that powerpoint presentations suffer from the same problem as classical music performances played strictly after scores. In my opinion, any kind of detailed choreographs are a real strait jacket for the performer and can be tiring for the audience. Black board presentations, in that analogy, resemble live Jazz sessions, with lots of freedom for improvisation and spontaneity. And the audience will leave the room energized !

[1] The ABC New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-21T20:44:00.014+01:00

Recently I stumbled upon a podcast entitled "Why your New Year's resolutions are a vain endeavor" (freely translated from German). My first spontaneous reaction was a feeling of assault. Next, I thought that the author is probably alluding to the fact that most of our resolutions are abandoned rather quickly. I had to admit that problem, for sure, but I still interpreted the headline of the podcast as an unfair self-fulfilling prophecy. Several days later, I listened to the actual content and found there a lot of good ideas about the reasons why we give up decisions so easily, a highly interesting topic worthwhile to come back to another time.

I love resolutions. Throughout my whole life (not only on New Year's Days), resolutions have marked the turning points in various kinds of crisis. In order to happen, a genuine resolution has to be preceded by a period of suffering, an extended span of time where our believes about how life should be are in increasing disagreement with (our believes about) the actual situation. Eventually, we become aware of possible causes of the problem and can identify some kind of error, or flaw, in our former behaviour. Identifying the error allows us to design proper counter measures. The resolution is a conscious decision to start applying these counter measures.

Once I come to that point, often a wonderful stream of self-control and will-power is filling my mind. In such precious moments I am feeling like a Samurai, the razor-sharp blade of his Japanese sword sparkling in the sun, preparing for a fight of life and death. All the doubts and confusions that have tortured me during the crisis fall away. There is nothing but focused, flexible energy, an empty blue sky and the open fate. In a way, the real (psychological) problem is already solved as soon we have a clear solution to our crisis in mind and start to take action.

It might be only a strange coincidence, or maybe also an effect of the often depressing weather in the early German winter. But during the last 4 or 5 years, each time precisely around the Christmas and New Year's season, I consistently found myself deeply within some form of crisis. So, in my case, the New Year's Day was a quite natural point for a new start. And since I love resolutions, this time I have set up a whole 24 of them, one for each letter of the alphabet !

My intention is to post in this blog, little by little, in no particular order, about all the 24 resolutions as individual topics. I will explain the philosophy behind them, describe my way of implementing them in daily life, and report how the plans develop in practice.

For the time being, I will just present the list of 24 topics. Some of the items are more like personal research projects, where I actually have no clear idea yet about how to approach them. Some will appear cryptic to you without explanation. Any way, here you are:

Atmosphere
Bubbles of Peace
Control Loops
Drop by Drop
Evolution
Flow Research
Getting Important Things Done
Handcraft
Imagination
Jazz
Key Activities
Learning
Middle Way
New Normality
Occam and Beyond
Persistence
Quality Growth
Reprogramming
Slowing Down
Teaming Up
Unplugging
Visible Products
Workout
X-Factor
Yellow Sun Glasses
Zen