Radical Simplicity.

This is a post on function.

I'm back in Germany, which means that I'm back—after a delightful wedding and a jaunt to Park City—to the daily grind of being a productive student. Ha. It's around 5AM, and thanks to the addling effects of jet lag I'm awake, and thinking about things that I want to change in my life in order to be better at studying, and generally just better at living. And for me, I think a key to that is radically simplifying what I do, when.

There are, I think, three principle steps I need to make to better change my focus from the banal to the effective:

1. Taking care of myself
2. Reducing distractions
3. Underscheduling my time

Essentially, this post is supposed to be a guideline for specific steps that I want to take to be more focused—because the economics of behavior dictate that we'll sort of fall into a lowest-energy orbital in the decisions we make, the obvious goal of any system of improvements should be to reduce exposure to those lesser options. Remove them as choices and you can't choose them. 

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. - Aristotle

I read some time ago that it's very intentional that television ads at 6 AM are for BMW and Charles Schwab and that ads at 11 PM are for china dolls and Oxi Clean, in easy payments: whether someone considers themselves a night owl or not, virtually everyone is more effective in the morning. A similar spin on the same idea was this Chinese proverb quoted by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: "No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich." It's easy enough for me today, with jet lag; making it sustainable could be a little more challenging.  With early rising, I'm also going to aim for at least eight hours of sleep a night, with nine hours blocked away being preferred.

Because I'm usually pretty good at exercise, I'll address that less here. It's simple enough to say that everyone out to aim for at least two to three hours of exercise a week, whether that means brisk jogging or killing themselves in cyclocross.  It keeps you happy and healthy, helps manage weight, improves focus and mental acuity, and even promotes cool things like the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor—and besides, happy people just don't kill their husbands. 'Nough said.

Discipline is the training which makes punishment unnecessary. - Pat Conroy

Now it's time for honesty as I get to point two: how much time do I spent per day on Facebook, Reddit, Quora (how ironic), computer forums, shopping sites, and other online time-killers? And how many times a day to I glance at my phone to see what's new on any one of the myriad communications channels there? Between social networks, email, and messaging, there are currently 12 different ways for someone to contact me on my phone — and counting the fact that it's a phone puts me up to a baker's dozen. That's insane, and that with hours of cheap browsing are unsustainable activities in an effective life. So I need to think on how to reshape the way I incorporate them into my school time: perhaps simple elimination of phone usage, and limiting email checks to thrice a day could be an answer. And then I can hit up Reddit after 5, when everyone is awake again anyway.

I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex. - Fred Rogers

Getting to the heart of it, the most important part for me will simply be to reduce the number of items I focus on to ensure that I'm not overbooking myself and losing the thread of important activities. Double majors have become the new undergrad degree in terms of impressiveness, and we're encouraged to tack on as many extracurriculars as possible, but what does that really show? In some sense, it probably shows that we're spread pretty thin. For me, the things I really care about are pretty narrow: school, learning some programming (next up, Python and advanced Excel), cycling, and experiencing Germany. Everything else is noise, roughly speaking.

The nice thing about narrowing things down is that it largely eliminates the stress of time, it promotes focus on the things that ARE important, and it leaves time for creativity and wholesome leisure—important things that fall too quickly by the wayside, and things that make people happy and whole.

I guess none of this is really news, and maybe none of this is even relevant for anyone else, but it's important for me: I waste too much time, and I could take better care of myself. I need to reduce the number of things I'm involved in, and focus on core competencies where I can improve. Radical simplicity is the key. Less is more.

Hello again.

It's been a few years.

Life is good, but somehow writing—or at least, blogging—has fallen by the wayside. (To add to that, this blog badly needed pruning; from now on I'll let the chips fall.) But tonight seems to be the night for it, because I'm feeling pensive: slow rain is falling on my windows as I look out at the valley, and the breeze smells like fall. It's a Robert Frost sort of night.

A quick and arbitrary list of changes since my last post: I'm living in Germany now, having gone back and forth two and a half times in as many years; I'm a student at Washington State University, showing Information Systems who's boss; I just finished an internship with the software giant SAP and enjoyed it there; I'm on the right track for good employment and great life adventures.

Salty and wind-swept, but warm and glittering. Keeping in step with the measure under the fixed stars of the task. How many personal failures are due to a lack of faith in this harmony between human beings, at once strict and gentle. - Dag Hammarskjöld

An interesting side effect of wandering is a sort of wistful loneliness, which seems to be hanging around this evening. It's not a bad thing, necessarily: Charles Bukowski called isolation a gift when talking about the important of going all the way for your dreams. With any luck, that's where I am now. But the world is cool and quiet and it makes the thousands of miles to friends and family that much more poignant in my thoughts. What does it mean, that I choose to be here?

Yesterday I went to the Frankfurt International Auto Show, which was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Just to give an idea, the first hall we went into was Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche, and Bugatti — and I don't think I stopped salivating for the ensuing eight hours. I sat in all sorts of cars, including the new Bentley Flying Spur, and decided that the BMW S1000RR is definitely the winner as far as sport bikes are concerned. But more interesting to me now was walking into the Frankfurt Flughafen Fernbahnhof (the railway station at the airport) to come back to Heidelberg and realizing that, to some degree or another, I've assimilated into the culture here — and then feeling that it's assimilated into me.

I've said over and over again that I'd love to live here; now it's happening, and it's at once right and terribly bewildering. As a person with two passports, I sometimes get the eery feeling that I'm a man without a country, straddling the Atlantic without a sure notion of where I really belong. When I was in an Apple Store on Friday, I talked to another dual citizen who's lived here for the last 30 years, and he said exactly the same. The way he explained it is that he didn't know where he would want to be buried, adding quickly that he hoped he had some time to think on it. It seems like that's the perfect way to describe it.

A friend of mine once wrote a sentence that's stuck in my memory: "When August comes, I will truly be alone in the city." I thanked her, then, for what she had to say on a Christmas Eve in the dark hours of night, but then that one sentence stuck around because it so clearly expressed to me what it's like to suddenly be expected to be an adult — suddenly expected to move up to the big leagues and pretend to know what life means and what to make of it. I'm certainly not there, and with the thoughts that I have as the person that I am, it remains the great intractable question that stays with me. But she kept dancing, and it's the most hopeful thing that could come from such a sentence.

For some, I think answers come in some form of religion or spirituality, or in a clearly defined purpose that drives them to the work. Some, having the laborious luxury of knowing their life's calling, have no choice but to push on in doing it. I don't know that I have any of those things. As Mr. Frost, I have walked out in rain and back in rain, and always at those moments that I'm acquainted with the night because I'm struggling to stay acquainted with myself, looking for answers or for a path or even just a breath of fresh air that gives me the quiet slumber that sometimes seeks to flee.

Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have form... - E.M. Forster

I suppose this is all a roundabout way of asking where I ought to be and what I ought to do. My gut says that I should be here and that I really am on the right track, but that doesn't eliminate the ifs, the whats, and the whys of living. Does anyone figure those out? Question mark.

In the meantime, fall is coming. The rain has stopped and now I can hear the sound of the A5 Autobahn (Basel-Frankfurt) and raindrops slipping from the trees. Somehow it's a perfect season for me, as the weather cools and the nights grow longer, trees change and the stars lend themselves to chilly observation on the hoods of cars or blankets that soak through too quickly. Fall is coming, and it is good.

An American Evening

You should know that the reason I don't write more often is because I'm on the rocks with writing lately. Sometimes words are wonderful, and sometimes they're the last thing I want to see. My words. I'm undoubtedly my worst critic, and I've tried to write -- but then I throw away my attempts, disgusted. C'est la vie.


As I walked past a McDonald's this evening, I saw what I had to have: the 1955 Burger. I'm not making that up, and, if I'm honest, it's one of the tastiest pretend-burgers I've eaten in years. It brought me back to good ole '55, when a burger was still a burger. To a time when Elvis was doing his thing, only men were allowed to read the newspaper, and the real Bel Air was still just a twinkle in a Chevy designer's eye. Those were the days.

Of course, a burger is hardly the place to stop when you're having a good time, and I was in the mood this evening for Something Completely Different. Cinema is the word I was after. After poking around on my phone, I found what I was looking for, and decided to walk into the city rather than take the subway because I still had time. One of the best decisions I've ever made, too, because I saw the Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren Sterling Moss edition - another throwback to another time and another era, but this time with a staggering 650hp (and even more torques) coming from its blown V8. So help me, I'm naming my second son Sterling Moss Nelson in honor of that exquisite car. And as soon as I have €895,836 laying around (yes, it was that specific), I'm buying that car. Well, no, I'm not. But it was pretty. And if I had to guess, it goes like hell and sounds like heaven.

I'll always stop what I'm doing to talk cars. You know me. Back to it, though, I found out this evening that there's an English-language cinema here in Munich. Granted, German's no longer an obstacle for me, but dubbed movie are one of the dumbest inventions known to man. I've wanted to see The American, a new George Clooney film, but the last thing I want to hear is a German who sounds vaguely like Clooney having to cram his lines into the time while George's lips are flapping. With all respect due to my dear Germans, it's preposterous. A country that can make 250MPH trains and $15,000 surgical scissors should see the superiority in subtitles. But I digress. Again.

The point is, I'm down to 26 days left here. My second round of courses has started, and I'm now in the second-to-highest level of classes offered by Johann's Institute. I've learned a great deal, and I continue to learn. As far as the language goes, I'm at the first point in my life where I think I can admit to myself that my German is good. Not good enough, but good. I'm not ready to go back.

I came to Germany to plan as much as to study. Dad's death threw my life -- and with it, likely some of my psychological health -- into turmoil. I came to Germany then, and that's part of why I'm in Germany now: this place I love, this place where I often feel more at home than America, is somehow where I recharge. Reflect, renew, recoup, redirect, undoubtedly other re-'s too. (If you think of a particularly good one, do let me know.) Meandering back from the theater as I am now, it's raining lightly, drunks are returning from d'Wiesn (hint: Oktoberfest), the world is quiet - and I love it. Goethe Institute will look good on a résumé when combined with my major and my mission, and will hopefully help me stand out in an increasingly homogeneous world. But more, I'm where I belong.

It's about time I know exactly what I want to do, and I have a pretty good idea of how to get there. I have my pilgrimage to the Fatherland to thank for that. It's funny how these things work. And although I'm talking -- writing -- as though I leave tomorrow, I know I still have weeks ahead (and a trip to Italy!) to enjoy and to utilize. But seeing future as present has always been (to a fault) my modus operandi, hasn't it?






(And for those of you who were wondering, the movie was excellent - though deserving of its rating. Reminiscent of The Professional, and replete with absolutely brilliant cinematography... I love it when composition helps tell a story, and, in concert with Clooney's subdued acting, it did. My favorite euro-style film in a while.)