Run Forrest, run!

Since I have started looking for a job my general behavior has been looking very similar to this of the presented antelope. It has never been as visible as is now. I started a billion parallel activities but I am not efficient and persistent in doing it. I will not write about finishing.

Let me list some of them:

• Full time job - only one item here on which I am focused enough. The problem is that it is not my goal.
• PhD studies - now I am focused also here, but not on scientific work which interests me the most. I have classes with students, lectures, seminars.
• Financial markets/investment - both education and practice.
• On-line game - shame on me, but I am playing a game via browser since the first year of my studies. I had a three, one year long breaks, but I am still playing. Now it is time I ended this once and for all. (Fortunately game quality is getting worse and worse).
• Every-week beer with friends - it should be a positive activity, but I am too tired to drink such big volumes of alcohol. I do not know what their reaction would be. I do not know if I will be persistent enough in my decision as well.
• Reading - "Islands in the Stream" should have been my great return to reading classics of world literature. Pathetic progress.
• Reading, listening, watching movies about life design, alternative sources of income. I made categorical decision to spend less time on it. I spend plenty still.
• Running, working on a gym, cycling, swimming - some, sometimes, rarely.
• Looking for a business opportunity - every time I have some free time while walking, cycling, doing nothing, I am thinking what business could I start. I do not expect spectacular success here, without trying, chances for success fall.
• House - I bought a house, half ruined, I am not sure what to do with it now. More about it later, I hope.
• Blog - as you can see, I was not able to keep my schedule: 3-4 posts a month.
• 
  

Is there anything what I would like to do and is not listed above? Of course there is: learning Spanish and Russian, sail round Baltic See, learn programming PS3, buying a dog, horse-back riding, parachute jumping, hiking somewhere alone for a week, dancing...

Probably not all, but the vast majority of my dreams. Not so hard to realize, but the main problem is: time.

It may be solved in three ways:

• Resign from point one on my list - I am not brave enough.
• Do whatever I am doing in a more efficient way - I am to week, I have to work more on myself.
• Combination of both

I am starting to get used to my current life. I am less pissed off because of lack of time. Lets see, maybe accommodation is a matter of time? If so, why I am trying to change it? Maybe the Party was right?

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

     

Or maybe Mark Twain was wiser? 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. 

 Many questions, lack of answers.

Summary: month 1 and 2

http://www.flickr.com/photos/josenicolas/ 

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." —Cyril Northcote Parkinson

These word also known as The Parkinosn's Law is widely known in project management. The first time I have heard it was during studying, on lecture on production management. This law is the theme of  "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. It is also used in personal time management. In my opinion, two month long time  boxes to summarize the progress is optimal. Timeboxing is also known in Scrum, where it is called sprint. Recommended length of sprint is 2-4 weeks. My activity is less dynamic than software development. Of course the main rule of Scrum, but not the only one, is to be flexible. It is possible that I will adjust my sprint length in the future. In Scrum there are a few team meetings:

• A planning meeting (at the beginning).
• Short  'stand up' meeting (every day, optional, but recommended). 
• Sprint review, sprint is summarized  (review itself and retrospective which helps to optimize whole process). 

The idea of first and last meeting is brilliant. To take maximum profit from my Scrum experience I decided to reuse the same ideas. Every two months I will publish a brief summary containing my failures, successes (review), analyze them, wrote conclusions (retrospective). After all I will try to share my plans for next two months. I didn't document all my plans two months ago but they could be recycled from the review. Let's start:

Failures:   

• 
  Social aspects of life.
   PhD studies are more and more time consuming. I spend a lot time on gaining new skills, new knowledge about passive sources of income, job via Internet and so on. As a result my social life is neglected. Sometimes I do not have social life.
• Reducing time spent in the office
  My target is to work wiser, more efficient, to earn the same amount of money but also to have time to enjoy life. Now I can see that I am working harder than before starting this blog. What I was able to achieve spending only 8h in the office (lunch included). I also earned 1 free day by sacrificing 3 hours of Sunday (weekend work)
• Regular, physical activity
  I wanted to return to everyday running and trainings. Now after work and 'school' I am too tired to anything. Of course, an important thing is human laziness. I tried to overcome it, after two weeks of intensive trainings I noticed that my organism refused to cooperate (I was permanently sleepy, tired and not able to concentrate) 

Successes

• 
  Natural sleep rhythm
  I am not using alarm clock anymore. Now I feel much more fresh. Humans have natural phases of sleep, ordinary alarm clock wakes you up without checking in which phase you are. As a result you could be tired the whole day. There is a possibility to program yourself to wake up at defined hour. Repeating "I will wake up at hour x" a few times just before falling asleep is enough. At the beginning my accuracy was +/- 2h, now it is +/-1h, not perfect but good enough.  
• Traveling
  Since the beginning of this year I have been able to visit two countries: Germany (one day trip) and Finland (3 day business trip). No I am sure that traveling to different countries, even for a while is the most valuable experience of all. If you have ever been abroad, you probably know what I mean. 
• Remote access to corporate network
  It may look odd to you, but I requested for a token which gave me the possibility to connect to my company network remotely. I am planing to use it wisely to limit the time spent in the office. It is only the first part of my plan.
• 1/8 of PhD studies passed 

More of, less of, continued (classic retrospective)

• 
  More time on PhD studies
  It is a very important activity. There is a big chance that it will be profitable in near future, so I should concentrate on it. What is more, if I lost my job, PhD would be my only source of income.
• Less time on reading about passive income, traveling, independence
  I have Google AdSense on my blog, but my assumption is that my blog is non-profitable. If so, I should concentrate on profitable activities. It does not mean that it is not important, it just should have lower priority.
• Be active
  It was the greatest failure, but should not be abandoned. 
• Constant number posts per month
  3-4 posts per month will be enough for now. 
• Traveling
  I could see how much fun it is, and how valuable it is, this activity should be continued

 Plans

• 
  Swimming pool once a week
• Finnish the most important task for PhD studies
• Sleep 6.5 h plus one 15 min. power nap 
• 3-4 posts a month 
• Looking for some interesting, open project 
• Find informations about psychological mechanisms related to need of long term planing  

Prison is a state of mind

http://wulffmorgenthaler.com/

How often do you dream about a journey around the World? How often do you say: 'If I had one billion dollars I would travel, enjoy my life, spend more time with my family'? Bullshits!
If you are poor child from somewhere in Central Africa this kind of things are dreams, otherwise they could become reality easier than you imagine. Everything that blocks you is inside you. It is not your credit, your salary, your children, your parents, your obligations, your imagination. It is you and your mind, which is somehow limiting you because of: culture, manners, education, old habits. Now I am under a high influence of different kinds of emotions, I have in mind old, Nike add:

 

Isn't it beautiful and true? Be careful when your are making most important decisions in your life, be patient when you are looking forward to seeing results of new actions. Be kind to people you meet, it will pay you back sooner you think. Everything your are doing or planning to do something, do it with passion and enjoy it. Good luck on your way, wherever it leads!

Go for gold

There are many blogs about  investment, gold itself and other metals. I would like to write a few words about why I am interested in  gold and silver.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wikicoins_user_james/

I have been thinking a long time about some investments that would allow me to save money for my retirement, there were a few requirements:

• easily exchangeable all around the world
• 'condensed' (lot of property in small volume)
• time resistant (retirement is a long time perspective)
• resistant to inflation and political turbulences 

This is not a coincidence that gold fits to all this requirements.

Gold's history is also one of the things that speak in favor of its usage as retirement investment. It has been used as the standard for many currencies (known as the gold standard). President Richard Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold in 1971. Now the exchange reserves of majority of countries is the U.S. $, in some countries the Euro, but in European countries it is the dollar again. As a result, the economy is based on paper currency which has no intrinsic value, it is called fiat currency . Some analytics suggests end of gold hegemony is only a matter of time, interesting article about it, some thinks that there would be a great return of gold standard (link).

Maybe in th future I will feel competent enough to cover this big topic in more detailed way

There is a few ways to buy gold: using Forex, buying gold certificates, investing in gold mining companies, gold related investment funds, and last, but not the least, buying physical gold. I decided to choose the last option because it is quite safe. I mean that it is real, physical piece of yellow shiny metal. The crash of electronic trading system or very strong sun storm and, as a result global loss of digital data, do not lead to the loss of my property. I can travel with it, sell ti wherever I want, ti always has its value as an metal. If someone planned to buy quite a lot of gold there could be a problem with a storing. In my case it is not, see monthly incomes. :)

First thing that came to my mind was: "How can I check if the piece of metal I bought is really the gold?" Here comes the next advantage of gold. It is unique as an element. Its density is ~19.30 g/cm3. If a debaser wanted to add something it would be wolfram or platinum. In case of platinum it is not profitable (for debaser of course), in case of wolfram it is really hard and the difference could be noticed in case of 1 oz coin or billet. If  the density of pure gold is unique I can just measure it. It was the first approach, but because my choice is a coin and because of its rough surface it was not so simple, but also not needed. My method is simple. Bullion coins have unified size and weight, measuring those values is enough to be 99.9% sure. Before taking any actions I decided to educate a bit. I found a very good site about investment in precious metals but unfortunately in polish (link). There is an article about gold testing. One of also considered methods was the Fisch, but the first approach is cheaper and reliable enough.It is also worth to mention that first coin should be bought in a trusted shop. Of course, it should be also tested to reduce the probability of buying forgery. Next coins could be bought from other, cheaper sources. They should be carefully tested and compared to the pattern (first coin).

As I mentioned before, my choice is a coin, Why? Because it is easier to sell it if needed, it is also harder to falsify.  I decided to buy Vienna Philharmonics bullion coin (same as at the picture). It was the cheapest, available, pure gold coin. No I am happy owner of two 1 oz coins.

   
Now a few words about silver.
Silver is a more common element. There is approximately 17.5 times more Ag than Au  on earth. On 11.02.2011 the price of 1 oz. of gold was worth 1259 $, 1 oz. of silver 30 $, the ratio is 41.9. If we assume that both silver and gold would have their value dependent on their availability silver is undervalued more than two times. Of course such assumption should not be treated 100% serious, there are many more dependencies than this one, but it could be one of  factors which make silver attractive for investment.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bullionbonus/

Silver has longer history than gold because it was easier to obtain. Similar to gold, it was a standard for currency. If we compare prices in last 60 years it could be seen that silver is less stable. A few years ago people started to get interested in silver as an investment, similar as gold. It has a few disadvantages.One of them is oxidation. Contrary to gold silver oxidize in normal conditions. Second is the fact that in case of silver the asset is less condensed. There is also some confusion about silver, for example Marks Keiser's action: "buy one silver coin".

All in all, In my opinion silver could be good alternative to gold. My plan is to have equal amount of money located in silver and gold. This plan is not executed yet, because I had a opportunity to use money in more attractive way. I am going to return to my plan as soon as I will have enough relatively free money. I decided to buy American Silver Eagle, it was a bit more expensive than Vienna Philharmonics, but I would like to be independent from bullion coin producer. The strategy of testing is similar as in the case of gold.

Sunscreen

Today the essay written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. It was used in its entirety by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann on his 1998 album Something for Everybody, as "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)".

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. 

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. 

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen. 

 —Mary Schmich

I discovered this essay and movie a week ago. In my opinion they describe my current feelings very well. I am not over 26, but giving even imaginary commencement speech could be a wonderful exercise. After seeing this movie hundredth times I feel more motivated to realize my targets than I was when I started this blog. Remember: wear sunscreen!

Why did I create this blog? Few words about targets and time management.

Probably it should be the first post. Better late than never.

First of all, this blog is for me.

It would be an electronic diary on my way to half-independence. It is very easy to assume that we will do something but without any superior it is hard to achieve any of our goals. One of the subjects of this blog is 'how to avoid becoming a modern slave', so superior is not the best solution. I will omit the part about finding someone who will keep his eye on us 24/7, maybe our parents but it is a bit too late for that. How about becoming a superior of myself? This question came to my mind many times. The main problem with self-control is that we have never been reporting back about our progress to anyone. What is more, the Parkinson law is against us. Throughout my whole adult life I had a very long list of 'TODOs'. I assumed that if I accomplish even very small fraction of dozens of ideas it will be a spectacular success. The main drawback of this way of thinking was that I started a few things at once and in majority of cases I did not finish any. My way of thinking evolved after I came across agile development. It was during my second (and also current) job. I am working as a software developer. I joined my team in a very interesting time, exactly during 'scrum transformation'. Scrum is one of agile methodologies which help team members control the whole process of software development (from specification to sale). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)

It is based on splitting whole work into small pieces, which could be finished in a fixed unit of time (for example two weeks). Now I have many valuable experiences with scrum process and impediments it faces. My intention is to port somehow the best ideas of scrum to my daily time management process. It is worth to mention, that scrum is mainly about: team work, how to make teams more efficient, what is the difference between the team and the group of people and so on. I am 'the lonely rider', but some ideas are very universal and it should not be hard to apply them. I am aware that I am still not perfect and I would never be. Now my list of things to do is a bit shorter, but it is still too long. I am also trying to do only continuous tasks (PhD studies, blog) and a few single ones during one week. The single tasks should be small enough to finish them during two or three days. When I finish a task I can pick up next one from the queue. Each task should have its priority, from engineering practice I know that it should be unique, so there would be now problems with choosing more important than the others. Of course, the most important task should be done first.

Now my tasks do not have documented priorities and I can see that sometimes, because of my laziness, I start from the easiest one. It is such a fantastic feeling to see a big list with majority of tasks marked as done :) . I think that this small digression grown enough. 

This blog should allow me to check how my vision of my life evolve.

George Santayana

It will be as a photo album. It is a lot of fun to sit in front of the fireplace with dozens of photos, recalling passed, often better and always different times. 

This blog will make my failures and successes visible.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." —George Santayana 

We are constructed in a way that we are allowed to remember only good things which happened to us. There is a rule saying: to allow people to learn you have to let them fail. By writing down my progress I will be able to check what happened long time ago, what were the problems, what were the conclusions and what I should do if similar situation happens again. Sounds handy,  I am curious to know if it really will be.  

Finally, I hope that after some time it will allow me to obtain many valuable comments form people with similar and different outlooks.

New Year's Eve fever

http://www.flickr.com/people/35614822@N08

Every year when the end of the year is close enough I can observe collective madness or mental illness. Every one have to go somewhere to celebrate New Year's Eve, get completely drunk and have terrible hangover. Situation looks similar probably all over the world. As I know only the Fare East (especially Buddhists) celebrates beginning of New Year in different, gentler way.

I, as majority, used to behave exactly same as a rest of the world: I planed how I spend this time a few months before 1st January, I did all the preparation, bought alcohol (more than I could consume),  finally I got drunk and suffer hangover all next day (or two).

This year was completely different. I made all the preparation and shopping two days before 'day of doom'. I was invited by my friends, there was a plan to drink all the alcohol, dance, watch  the fireworks and suffer the next day. After all the preparations I stand up Friday morning and asked myself one, very important question: 'why?' Why I have to be one of the stars in this big circus? You can not imagine how was the astonishment when I declared that I am staying home. And do you know what? It was the best New Year Eave in my life. I spent it with my girlfriend, a bottle of wine and 'Bad Santa' movie. By the way, a thousands thanks to her, because she supported me in my operation.

www.filmweb.pl

This story is excellent entry to write a few words about term known as a comfort zone. Following Wikipedia comfort zone is 'a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk'. How big is my comfort zone? At the moment not so big. I have no problem with asking a random question to passer by, but if you asked me to resign from my current job, go to some tropical country for a two year journey, I would definitely refuse. Now, after eight years of full-time work I fell limited by my comfort zone. It is probably first step on a way to make it wider. How? By exercises like experiment with the New Year Eve described above.

Our comfort zone is created not only by ourselves. In my opinion is a kind of legacy of our parents, teachers, neighbors. When I was younger it was thought to me that studying is a careless time in life which could never been repeated. It was thought by my parents, grandparents, neighbor, even Dean of my faculty during graduation ceremony. Is it really so? Were they right? Not far before I would agree, but know I know that depend on my own. How hard I will be working on myself? How bereave will I be to follow my dreams?

Now the New Year starts it is good occasion to clear an account and start from beginning. I am not a fan of New Year's resolutions but it is coincident that I started this blog at the and of last year.

All the best in New Year! Work less, earn more and be really, really happy in your life!                          

Microeconomics: incomes, expenses, free resources

To not decrease income it is worth to now how big it is. Today it is easy to calculate. My mainly source of income is my full time job:

INCOME = 1184 $ monthly

It is very close to average salaries in Poland (gross). It was my requirement when I was looking for a job: have clear income at country average level.

I have some additional incomes: benefits in my company and income from financial market.
I treat financial markets rather like a school, so I am a bit over zero. 

This additional sources are so low that I will omit it in further analyze.

There are basically two ways to increase amount of 'free' resources. First is to increase income, second, to reduce expenses. Simple, isn't it?

www.flickr.com

My monthly expenses:  

apartment:	114 $
life costs (food etc.):	200 $
entertainment (books, tickets etc.):	100 $
latte factor:	50 $
PhD studies:	20 $
other (gifts for Christmas etc.):	50 $
_____________________________	_____
EXPENSES TOTAL:	534 $

I do not put into practice any of my dreams expect PhD studies, so the rest is assigned as savings.

SAVINGS = INCOME – EXPENSES = 650 $

Let check if something could be reduced.

• First of all, latte factor (money spend on small pleasures). I could resign from "latte" once a week, but is it really the point?
  I started this blog because I would like to work less, live and enjoy my life. I assume reduction of expenses only if I have to invest some money in new, alternative, less time consuming source of income.  

• Life costs: here I have a big field to act. If I will spend less time in the office it will be possible not to eat in restaurants or bars and prepare food by myself. It does not look fantastic, but believe me it is really a lot. It is healthier, cheaper and this pleasure. Yes, I love cooking! 

Now it is time for second possibility: bigger income. This target could be reached in many ways:

• The simples - changing the job. I have 8 months of experience in elite embedded systems project, probably I will earn much more in my second job, but…
  New job == more time spent on enabling, more time to show new boss "Hey! I am worth money you pay me!"  This is not my goal.

• Start own company. It gives the comfort of being own boss, no limitation of work hours, but...
  It is really hard to find the gap in the market and beat the competitors. Practically I will spend much more time leading my own company than just working as a corpo-slave. Second thing – money: at the begging the income will be, most likely, negative. In case of success path and long time horizon income would be much bigger than normal salaries in corporation, even when we take at account possibility of promotion. Maybe good solution, but it is risky. I could loose the best years of my life to creating something I couldn't enjoy. I am scared thinking about time when I could consume earned money. 

• Last possibility: remote job, as contractor or freelancer. It is very demanding, without enormous self-control success is probably impossible, but…
  At he moment I think it is only way. How I imagine my remote job, what I am planning and much more in next posts.

That is all for today. About savings there, for sure, will be independent post. 


  

Adm. Painter: Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan

www.filmweb.pl

Day first. The hardest part. How to plan soft switch from current lifestyle (8/10 day workweek) to 'new life' with less work, more free time, traveling, fun and all the staff called life?

Why to plan? Not because of title (I am not a Russian). Without plan transformation will be closer to a dream and far away from reality. By planning you can make some drawbacks visible. I am thinking about some agile-like planning. Main idea is not to delimit deadline. Everything changes. It could be, that I will be somehow forced to give up. This blog should help me to continue transformation. I hope that with new posts my plan will be more and more clear.

Why soft switch?  In my opinion it is the only way to achieve one of the goals – not decrease total income. If I resigned from work how could I earn same amount of money?  

Starting from now, I am sure about one thing: something has to be changed in my life. The first step will by looking for new, less time consuming source of income.  
I also started lecture of "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. I am curious to know if adaptation of American patents to polish reality is possible.