Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

•  Frenzied activity.... the fact that it's increasingly beyond control. Few WANT to spend so much time online. ... behavioral addictions. The URGE to check Twitter or REFRESH become a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence neccessary for an international life.
• This irresistible attraction to screens is leading people to feel as though they're ceding more and more of their autonomy when it comes to deciding how they direct their attention.
• They joined Facebook to stay in touch with friends across the country, and then ended up unable to maintain an uninterrupted conversation with the friend sitting across the table.
• In an open marketplace for attention, darker emotions attract more eyeballs than positive and constructive thoughts.
• What Andrew Sullivan meant when he lamented: "I used to be human being."
• This reality creates a jumbled emotional landscape where you can simultaneously cherish your ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram while fretting about this app's ability to invade the evening hours you used to spend talking with friends or reading.
• I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more to our relationship with digital tools.
• Marcus Aurelius asked: "You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?"
• you'll encounter many examples of digital minimalists who experiences massively positive changes by ruthlessly reducing their time spent online to focus on a small number of high-value activities.
• The minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what's extreme is how much time EVERYONE ELSE spends staring at their screens. The key to thriving in our high-tech world, they've learned, is to spend much less time using technology.
• What's making us uncomfortable is this feeling of LOOSING CONTROLL
• It's not about usefulness, it's about autonomy
• Checking your likes is the new smoking
• "This thing is a slot machine," Harris says early in the interview while holding up his smartphone.
• Well every time I check my phone, I am playing the slot machine to see "What did I get"
• Technology is not neutral  - they want you to use it in particular ways and for long periods of time. Because that is how they make their money.
• If the ap is only one tap away on the phone in your pocked, a moderate behavioral addiction will make it really hard to resist checking your account again and again throughout the day
• (very low hurdle (=cost) to succumb to addiction)
• how tech companies encourage behavioral addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval
• rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern (=slot machine)
• "gambling" every time they post something
• Will you get likes
• one facebook engineer calls "bright dings of pseudo-pleasure"
• sparked by unrpedictable feedback: most articles end up duds, but occasionally you'll land on one that creates a strong emotion
• Facebook: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" - we need to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone likes or commented on a photo or a post or whatever
• The universal urge to immediately answer an incoming text, even in the most inappropriate or dangerous conditions (think: behind the wheel)
• Compulsive use is not the result of a character flaw, but instead the realization of a massively profitable business plan. 
• We didnt sign up for the digital lives we now lead.
• Our current unease with new technologies is not really about whether or not they're useful. It's instead about autonomy.
• we need to make a serious strategy - to swat aside the forces manipulating us toward behavioral addictions
• What all of us who struggle with these issues need is a philosophy of technology use. Something that covers from the ground up which digital tools we allow into our life, for what reasons, and under what constraints.
• Introspection
• Happily miss out on everything else
• By working backward from their deep values to their technology choices, digital minimalists transform these innovations from a source of distraction into tools to support a life well lived.
• Constrasts starkly with the maximalist philosophy that most people deploy by default - a mind-set in which any potentital for benefit is enough to start using a technology that catches your attentoin
• Why do I need to use facebook - I would ask. I can tell you exactly - what if theres something useful to you in there that you're missing
• minimalists dont mind missing out on small things, what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good
• that now that his phone is no longer glued to his hand
• he got rid of his smartphone and replaced it with a basic flip phone
• the core question: "Is this the best way to use technology to support my value"
• In true minimalist fashion didnt settle for simply deciding to use instagram, he instead through hard about how best to integrate this tool into his life. Posting one picture every week of whatever personal art project he happens to be working on
• His own father wrote him a handwritten note every week during his freshman year of college.
• cluttering their time - creates an overall negative costs - that swamp the small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.
• Think carefully about HOW you'll use the technology
• Being more intentional about how you engage with new technologies
• is a nicer-looking window treatment really worth so much of your life? why would you add hours of extra labor to obtain a wagon?
• Things are more easily acquired than getting rid of
• How much of your time and attention must be sacrificed to earn the small profit of occasional connections an dnew ideas that is earned by significant presence in ... twitter, linkedin,...
• The law of diminishing returns can apply to the various ways in which we use new technologies to produce value in our personal lives.
• lets focus in trying to improve the value these processes return in your life - through better selection of tools, the adoptoin of smarter strategies for using these tools
• Not only what technologies to adopt but also how
• netflix not alone (i watch only on bike)
• remove social media apps from phone (only browser)
• news collect and only read dedicated en bloc once a week
• personal emails only laptop not mobile
• replace online news by radio or a news summary podcast
• printed newspaper
• setup schedule for calling and texting with friends
• remove web browser from phone
• 
  
• Start furiously optimizing
• the very act of being selective about your tools will bring you satisfaction, typically much more than what is lost from the tools you decide to avoid
• The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly. but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists
• Gradually changing your habits one at a time doesnt work well (like smoking one cigarette less,...)
• My addiction habits were revealed in striking clarity. I'd reach for my phone and then remember that everything was gone.
• The compulsion to browse SOMETHING was too strong to ignore
• trying to rediscover what is important to you and what you enjoy outside the world of the always-on, shiny digital
• reducing the role of digital tools in your life - if you cultivate high-quality alternaties to the easy distraction they provide
• rediscovering what you enjoy
• to put tehcnology to work on behalf of specific things you value.
• This means to and end approach to technology requires clarity on what these ends actually are
• finished 8.5 books that month
• finished 3 books
• organized wardrobe
• setup dinner with friends
• face-to-face with brother
• hunt for a new home
• restarted painting
• computer coding
• start journaling
• listening to records on a record player - from beginning to end
• start own blog
• connect with other hobbyists
• visit local library
• spending real time with his boys
• interacting more intentionally
• playing piano
• far less rushed and distracted
• "perceived lack of time"
• aggresively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time
• strenuous activity and experimentation
• rediscover activities that generate real satisfaction
• technology serves only a supporting role for more meaningful ends
• the fact that a technology offers SOME value is irrelevant - deploy technology to serve the things you find most important in your life - be HAPPY missing out on everything else
• how addicted he had become to checking news online
• Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes
• This isnt bringing me any kind of happiness - these technologies arent actually adding anything to my life
• Time and space to think
• What made his time at the cottage special  was the lack of people demanding his attention: Lincoln was able to be alone with his thoughts.
• Everyone benefits from regular doses of solitude and anyone who avoids this state for an extended period of time will suffer
• Give your brain the regular doses of quiet it requires to support a monumental life
• to be a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds
• Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences - wherever you happen to be
• Edward Gibbon lived a solitary life, but not only did he produce wildly influential work, he also seemed perfectly happy
• Solitude can be just as important for both happiness and productivity
• New technologies help create a culture that undermines time alone with your thoughts, noting that "it matter enormously when that resource is under attack."
• Average user spends three hours a day looking at their smartphone screen and picks up their phone thirty-nine times a day
• Solitude deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.
• In 1990s still there were many situations in everyday life that forced you to be alone with your thoughts.
• This prioritization of communication over reflection becomes a source of serious concern.
• ability to clarify hard problems
• regulate your emotions
• build moral courage
• strengthen relationships
• the quality of your life degrades
• She had begun seeing major shifts in student mental health
• We NEED solitude to thrive as human beings we've been systematically reducing this crucial ingredient from our lives.
• Humans are not wired to be constantly wired.
• Assuming you accept my premise that solitude is necessary to thrive as a human being, the natural follow-up question is: How can you find enough of this solitude in the hyper-connected twenty-first century
• I've always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone. Now what that X represents I dont really know... but it's a substantial ratio.
• Practice: Leave your phone at home
• Everyone secretly fears being bored
• in 90% of your daily life, the presence of a cell phone either doesnt matter or makes things only slightly more convenient. They're useful, but it's hyperbolic to believe its ubiquitous presence is vital.
• life without a cell phone is occasionally annoying, but it's much less debilitating than you might expect.
• The urgency we feel to always have a phone with us is exaggerated.
• Smartphones are the primary enabler of solitude deprivation, therefore it makes sense to try to spend regular time away from these devices - re-creating the frequent exposure to solitude
• I recommend that you try to spend some time away from your phone most days
• It does aim to convince you that its completely reasonable to live a life in which you sometimes have a phone with you and sometimes do not.
• Practice: Take long walks
• Nietzsche began to walk up to eight hours a day. During these walks he would think, eventually filling six small notbooks
• key property of walking - its a fantastic source of solitude
• solitude = Freedom from input from other minds
• contrast the originality of walk-stimulated ideas with those produced by the bookish scholar locked in a library reacting only to other people's work
• but honest-to-goodness, depp-in-the-woods, Nietzsche-on-the-slope-of-a-mountain-style long journeys - these are the grist of productive aloness.
• I sometimes start a walk with the intent of tackling one of these goals, and then soon discovery my mind has other ideas about what really needs attention.
• how hard it would have been to pick up these signals amid the noise that dominates in the absence of solitude (if not walking)
• On a regular basis, go for long walks, preferably somewhere scenic. Take these walks alone, without your phone.
• The hardest part of this habit is making the time. You'll have to invest effort to clear the neccessary hours from your schedule
• Broaden your definition of "good weather"
• The power of specialized craftsmanship in an age of general-purpose computing
• Journaling
• uneven pacing - sometimes I'll fill dozens of pages in a single week, while othe times many months might pass without any new notes
• they provide me a way to write a letter to myself when encountering a complicated decision, or a hard emotion, or a surge of inspiration. 
• Composing my thoughts in the structured form demanded by written prose
• habit of regularly reviewing these entries
• It's the act of writing itself that already yields the bulk of the benefits
• Solitude as time spent alone with your own thoughts
• Writing a letter to yourself is an excellent mechanism for generating exactly this type of solitude
• The key is the act of writing itself. This behavior necessarily shifts you into a state of productive solitude - wrenching shifts you into a state of productive solitude - wrenching you away from the appealing digital baubles and addictive content waiting to distract you, and providing you with a structured way to make sense of whatever important things are happening in your life at the moment.
• Social Media
• The more you use social media to interact with your network, the less time you devote to offline communication.
• The negative associations of Facebook use are comparable in magnitude to the positive impact of offline interaction - suggesting a trade-off
• The key issue is that using social media tends to take people away from the real-world socializing that's massively more valuable
• The small boosts you receive from posting on a friends wall or liking their latest Instagram photo can't come close to compensating for the large loss experienced by no longer spending real-world time with that same friend.
• Distinction between connection (low-bandwidth interaction) vs the much richer, high-bandwidth communication that defines real-world encounters between humans
• Fully present to one another, we learn to listen
• young employees who retreat to email because the thought of an unstructured conversation terrifies them
• My argument is not anti-technology. It's pro-conversation
• Anything textual or non-interactive doesn't count as conversation
• conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. You'll almost certainly reduce the number of people with whom you have an active relationship. Real conversation takes time.
• Just five days at a camp with no phones or internet was enough to induce major increases in the campers' well-being and sense of connection.
• Instead of seeing these easy clicks as a fun way to nudge a friend, start treating them as poison to your attempts to cultivate a meaningful social life. Stop using them. Dont click "like". Ever.
• Stop leaving comments on social media posts as well
• teach your mind that connection is a reasonable alternative to conversation
• Despite your good intentions, the role of low-value interactins will inevitably expand until it begins to push out the high-value socializing that actually matters.
• Dont be distracted from this reality by the shiny stuff on your screen
• The more you text, the less neccessary you'll deem real conversation, and, perversely, when you do interact face-to-face, your compulsion to keep checking on other interactions on your phone will diminish the value you experience.
• Keep your phone in Do not Disturb mode by default
• Turn off notification when text messages arrive.
• Adjust the settings so calls from a selected list do come through
• Anxiety reduction
• If people are used to grabbing your attention at any time,... (EDUCATE the people around you by not reacting and replying)
• If they need you urgently, they can always call you
• When someone instigates a low-quality connection, suggest they call or meet you during your office hours sometime when it is convenient for them.
• People deploy daily walks for this purpose - (join me for a conversation on the walk)
• low-quality digital distractions play a more important role in people's lives than they imagine
• more and more people are failing to cultivate the high-quality leisure lives that Aristotle identifies as crucial for human happiness
• It's now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family and sleep by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping
• He didnt know what to do with himself once his general access to the world of connected screens was removed
• Cultivating high-quality leisure
• "I never understood the joy of watching other people play sports, cant stand tourist attractions, dont sit on the beach, dont care about what the celebrities and politicians are doing. I seem to get satisfaction only from making stuff
• I'll have a joyful time rotating between carpentry, weight training, writing, playing around with instruments, making lists and executing tasks from them
• for me, inactivity leads to a depressive boredom
• the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity, they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change - not rest, except in sleep
• Expending more energy in your leisure, can end up energizing you more.
• We might tell ourselves theres no greater reward after a hard day at the office than to have an evening entirely devoid of plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began
• "craft" describes any activity where you apply skill to create something valuable
• high-value behaviors
• craft is a good source of high-quality leisure
• People have the need to put their hands on tools and to make things. We need this in order to feel whole.
• Many people experience the world largely through a screen now. We live in a world that is working to eliminate touch as one of our senses, to minimize the use of our hands to do things except poke at a screen.
• the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.
• Become handy
• start with small projects
• Join something
• sports clubs
• Social events
• Gaming evenings, poker round
• Strategize your free time, quarterly plan and reflect
• Go on a hike
• Doing nothing is overrated
• Invest energy into something hard but worthwile almost always returns much richer rewards
• Attention resistance movement
• Its instead quite natural, once you recognize that the power of a general-purpose computer is in the total number of things it enables the user to do, not the total number of things it enables the user to do simultaneously.
• the ideal of single-purpose computing that much more compatible with our human attention system
• "low information diet" in which you aggressively eliminate sources of news and information to help reclaim more time for other pursuits
• focus only on the highest value sources
• limit your attention to the best of the best
• I feel less anxious. I hadnt realized how anxious i had become
• the key to sustained success with this philosophy is accepting that it's not really about technology, but it is instead more about the quality of your life.

The fund - Rob Copeland

•  The theory posited that employees should be tested and ranked by their overall problem-solving ability - known as stratum - and that managers must always be more capable of complex, broad thinking than their subordinates.
• two people inside bridgewater had higher believability scores than dalio himself
• Dalio: Why doesnt believability cascade from me?
• a new rule build into the software: Dalio himself would be the new baseline for believability in virtually all important categories
• A strong Sharpe ration was 2.0. though a ratio of 2.0 or even higher wasn't out of the question for top investors. ... Dalio's approach produced a Sharpe ration of less than 1.0
• Concepts of alpha and beta. Beta was the return that any investor would expect to get simplay from exposure to the markets. ... Alpha, on the other hand, was the extra juice. ... What a talented investment manager could earn on top of the beta return.
• To people that didnt deliver and respond after two reminders:
• "Those who didnt get them in and didnt communicate with you after being nagged twice are fired." ... People who cant do what they are asked or have a quality communication when asked to do something twice are not the sort of people that you want to rely on... Anyway, they are not the sort of people who I want to work here.
• A reporter: "In the time I spent at the firm I saw senior people criticizing subordinates - but not the reverse."
• The one metric highly correlated with how much a country would grow was the number of hours per week its citizens worked.
• "There is no cycle of history. It's a fantasy"
• "I always feel that when someone uses the f-word, they're losing the argument."
• "You've got 375 principles. Those arent principles. Toyota has fourteen principles. Amazon has fourteen principles. The bible has ten. 375 cant possibly be principles. They are an instruction manual.
• Stefanova described herself as having spend "nine years as a seinor executive and managing comitteee adviser reporting directly to the CEO at Bridgewater Associates and serving in critical investment and management leadershipo roles." In truth, she had been far removed from any invetment leadership role, critical or otherwise, but the pitch worked. She raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors,... [No one is checking facts]
• Though relatively few people present knew anything about how the hedge fund actually invested.
• Those at Bridgewater who had been rated highly... They earned it by being an artificial Ray Dalio. ... Model oneself after the only man who mattered. Bridgewater didnt run on believability. It ran on believers. "Ray, this is a religion", Rubinstein said
• Remarkably few people at briedgewater were involved day-to-day with how the hedge fund made money.
• Only a tiny group at Bridgewater, no more than about ten people, enjoyed a different view. This band of almost allm en were chosen not only on merit, but on loyalty. They almost eiwhtout exception had never woeked anywhere else. ... The lucky few satdown with Dalio and were offered a choise. n excahnge for signing a lifetime contract - and swarting never to work at another trading firm - they would be one of theh andful to see ithe inner secrets of Briedgewater, what Dalio had earlier in his career called the Holy Grail.
• There were two version of how Briedgewater invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the markets. One version Dalio told the public, and clients, over and over. The other version was what happened with the Circle of Trust behind closed doors.
• The transpared discussion.. It was also almost entirely irreleant to what Bridgewater did with its money; as one firmer top investment staffer put it: "It's a facade"
• I could run this firm", Jensen once told a friend over drinks, "on a single spreadsheet".
• The secret... was that there was no secret. Dalio was Bridgewater and Dalio decided Bridgewater's investments.
• There was essentially no grand system, no artificial intelligence of any substance, no Holy Grail. There was just Dalio.
• It also helped explain why Bridgewater seemed not to move the market with its trading.
• Dalio could have skipped the cloudy language and more simply described Pure Alpha as a series of if-then rules. If one thing happened, then another would follow.
• Many of the rules dealt simply with following trends.... Dictated following the momentum in various markets.
• Bridgewater was among the first hedge funds to create its own estimates of economic growth, integrating both public statistics and its own market surveys.
• As the years passed, however, Dalio's advantage softened.
• The study showed that Dalio was wrong as much as he was right. Trading on his ideas lately was often akin to a coin flip.
• Dalio picked up the piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it.
• Didnt mention the leib familys help nor his wifes family wealth [to start his company and fund]
• didnt mentino the funds relatively lackluster performance since 2010
• the published principles werent the principles. They were more like Some Principles
• He could apparently accept giving up the practice (radical transparency, the transparency library), but would never give up the story. (he keeps on telling on TV, in his books etc.)
  
• An annual fixed fee of 3.39%, but receiving only an average return of 3.1 %
• By now, the principles were more of a fantasy, or, perhaps more kindly, a collection of fables. ... Though they had nevery had as much impact on the firm's investing as he claimed publicly, they were rapidly cast aside elsewhere across the firm, too.
• It proved though to be a bully when anyone could put him on mute. [covid time all in VC]
• No major company publicly signed up to adopt The Principles
• found out the hard way that intergenerational wealth can be fleeting. Their three sons frittered away the family fortune in usual ways: divorces, the racetrack, poor investments,...
• Bridgewater laid off most of the remaining staff dedicated to building the Principles software. It was 100 mUSD, at least, down the drain.

- "Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You dont have to be faster than the bear, only faster than your fellow people who are fleeing.

Bhagavadgita - Das Lied der Gottheit

Wer voll von Wahn Genuss erstrebt

Und himmlische Glückseligkeit

Gelangt niemals, o Prithas Sohn

Zur Ruhe und Beständigkeit

begehre nie der Taten Frucht, 

Doch fräöne nicht dem Müßiggang

Ob gut, ob schlecht der Ausgang sei;

Bewahre stets den Gleichmut dir.

Erhaben über alles Tun

Für immer die Erkenntnis bleibt.

In der Erkenntnis suche Schutz;

Verächtlich ist, wen Lohnsucht treibt.

Denn jenseits von Verdienst und Schuld

Steht der,d er die Erkenntnis hat,

Drum wiehe ernst dem Yoga dich,

Er macht gechichkt zu aller Tat.

Die Weisen, die entsagungsvoll

Sich fon der Sucht nach lOhn befrein,

Die gehn, erlösut von Wiederkerh,

Zur leidentrückten Stätte ein.

Hat sich dein Denken einmal erst6

Vom Wirrsal allen Wahns entfernt, 

Wenn so dein Geist, nicht mehr berückt

Von alter *Überliefrung Schein,

Gesammelt, unbeweglich ruht,

Dann ist die wahre Andacht dein.

Wer jede sinnliche Begier,

O Sohn der Pritha, von sich weist,

In sich und durch sich selbst beglü+ckt,

Den, Tapfrer, nennt man fest im Geist.

Wen nie ein Leid erschüttern kann,

Kein Freudentaumel überwand,

Wer frei von Gier, von Furcht und Zorn,

Ein Schweigender wird der genannt.

Wer nicht frohlockt, nicht mürrisch wird,

Ob Glück, ob Unglück ihn befällt,

In allem frei von Leidenschaft,

Der heißt, o Freund, ein Geistesheld.

Drum wer die Leidenschaft bezähmt, 

Mit Herz uind Sinn mir zugewnadt,

Wer seiner Sinne Mister ist,

Nurt der wird fest im Geist genannt.

Aus Neigung dann entsteht Begier,

und aus BEgier wird Zorn erzeugt.

Der Zorn dann wider schafft den Wahn,

Der Wahn Gedächtnisstörung schafft,

Gedächtnisschwund trübt die Vernunft;

Fehlt sie, versiegt des Denkens Kraft.

Doch wer von Hass und Liebe frei,

Betrachtet diese Sinnenwlet,

Der kommt zu stiller Heiterkiet,

Wenn Selbstzucht seinen Weg erhellt.

Wem stille Ruhe ward zuteil,

Den fechten keine Leiden an,

Und überlegene Vernunft

Beherrscht bei seinem Tun ihn dann.

Ist Wahrheit dem, der SICH bezwingt

Den Brahma Zustand nennt man dies,

Wer den erlangt, ist frei von Wahn,

Im Ewigen löst er sich auf

Am Ende seiner Lebensbahn

Vollziehe das notwendige Werk,

Denn Tun ist besser als nicht tun,

Das nicht geschiegt aus Opferpflicht;

Vollbringe darum zwar ein Werk,

Doch hänge an demselben nicht.

Doch wer an seinem Selbst sich freut,

An seinem eignen Selbst vergnügt,

Für den bleibt hier nichts mehr zu tun.

Weil ihm sein eignes Selbst genüft.

Vom Einfluss aller andern frei,

Verfolgt er seines Lebens Plan. 

Wer frei von Wunsch ist und Begier,

Der wird ein Wissender genannt.

Wer nicht der Taten Frucht erstrebt,

Zufrieden, auf sich selbst gestellt,

Der ist von allem Handeln frei,

Auch wenn er handelt in der Welt.

Wer ohne Hoffnung und Besitz

Gezähmten Sinns sein Werk vollstreckt,

Der handelt mit dem Leibe nur,

Er wird von keiner Schuld befleckt.

Wem, was von selbst sich beut, genügt,

Wer keinen Gegensatz mehr spürt,

Wem gleich sind Fehlschlag und Erfolg,

Der wird vom Handeln nicht berührt.

Wem Wissen fehlt und Glaube fehlt,

Wer Zweifel hegt, wird untergehn:

In dieser Wet, in jener Welt,

Wird niemals Glück für ihn entstehn.

Wer alle Werke von sich warf,

Wer jeden Zweifel überwand,

Wer so sein wahres Selbst gewann,

Den fesselt nicht der Werke Band,

Wer seine Pflichten treu erfüllt,

Nicht nach dem Lohn der Taten fragt,

Der ist ein wahrer Yogi nur

Wer nicht mehr hängt an einem Tun

Noch an der Sinnendinge Lauf,

Wer allen Wünschen hat entsagt -

Der - heißt es - stieg zum Yoga auf.

Der steht mit seinem Selbst im Bund,

Der sich aus eigner Kraft besiegt;

In Feindschaft lebt mit seinem Selbst,

Wer seinen Trieben unterliegt.

Wer durch sich selbst sein Selbst bezwang.

Wer maßvoll speist und sich erholt,

Wer maßvoll handelt jederzeit,

Wer maßvoll schläft und maßvoll wacht,

Bei dem tilgt Yoga jedes Leid.

Wer einen wohlbezähhmten Sinn

Im Innern tief befestigt hat,

Von keinerlei Begier beleckt,

Der hat der Andacht sich genaht.

Wenn man durch Selbst das Selbst erschaut

Und rihig sich am Selbst erfreut

Entsagend einem jeden Wunsch,

Den unsre Einbildung gebar,

Durch strenges Denken zügle man

Der unbotmäßigen Sinne Schar.

Allmählich tritt die Ruhe ein,

Wohin das schwanke Denken auch

Usnteten Wesens sich verliert,

Stets wird zur Unterwerfung es

Durch weisen Zwang zurückgeführt

Die höchste Lust den überkommt

Der Ruhe des Gemüts erreicht

Und frei von Trieb und frei von Schuld

Dem makellosen Brahma gleicht.

Wohl ist, o Held, zu zügeln schwer

Des Herzens Vieleweglichkeit,

Doch bannet es, o Kuntis Sohn

Die Übung und Besonnenheit.

Doch wer den rechten Weg beschritt,

Bis zur Vollendung vorwärtsdringt.

Furchtlosigkeit und Lauterkeit,

Im Wissenstrieb Beharrlichkeit,

Freigebigkeit, Enthalsamkeit

Und Opfer, Buße, Redlichkeit

Und Unschuld, Güte, Freundlichkeit,

Wahrhaftigkeit, Leutseligkeit

Und Menschenliebe, Milde, Ernst,

Schamhaftigkeit und Festigkeit,

Kraft, Langmut, Würde, Mäßigkeit,

Ausdauer, Demut, Arjuna,

Sind Zeichen göttlicher Geburt;

Dies halte fest, o Bharata.

Voll unerträglicher Begier

Als wohn im Leben nur das Glück

Von eitlen Hoffnungen genarrt,

Genuss nur suchen, häufen sie

Das frevelhaft erworbne Gut.

"Jetzt hab ich dieses Gut erlangt,

Und der Genuss steht mir bevor,

Jetzt hab ich so viel, morgen mehr."

So denkt und rechnet stets der Tor.

Denn Buße, Reinheit, Redlichkeit,

Geduld, Enthaltsamkeit und Ruh,

Erkenntnis, Wissen, Frömmigkeit

Kommt der Natur des Priesters zu.

Ausdauer, Kraft, Gewandheit, Mut

Wer sein Gemüt geläutert hat,

Wer in Beständigkeit sich übt,

Wer sich der Sinnenwelt verschließt,

Wen weder Hass noch Neigung trübt;

Wer in der Einsamkeit gern lebt,

Mit Fasten Leib und Sinn kasteit,

Wer fromme Selbstbetrachtung übt,

Sich von der Leidenschaft befreit;

Wer Selbstsucht, Wolllust, Denkel, Zorn

Und Prahlsucht völlig abgestreift,

Gelassen, ohne Habe ist,

Der ist zur Göttlichkeit gereift.

Zum Brahm geworden, heiter, still,

Erlöst von Kummer und von Gier

Und allen Wesen gleichgesinnt,

Hegt höchste Liebe er zu mir.

Investments Unlimited

•  "It's amazing what happens when you can focus and finish a task, even on a seamingly tight deadline"
• The build trap
• a concept where if you only focus on delivering features and neglect experimentation and learning, than you likely aren't building the right thing.
• We never put stories in to improve and possibly re-architect our build process
• Everyone was so busy trying to keep up with daily work that they had no time to improve daily work.
• Architecture vs implementation: Implementation first is akin to the tail wagging the dog
• The Socratic method: Asking questions
• The fastest way to upset an Engineering team is to undertake a more intense process to develop and deliver their software.
• We just made the right way easy. We paved the road, if you will. And when you make the right way easy, people tend to do the right thing.
• In a presentation: On the screen were the words: "Why would we not want this?"

Momo - Michael Ende

•  "Siehst du, Momo", sagt er dann zum Beispiel, "es ist so: Manchmal hat man eine sehr lange Straße vor sich. Man denkt, die ist so schrecklich lang; das kann man niemals schaffen, denkt man."
• Er blickte eine Weile schweigend vor sich hin, dann fuhr er fort: "Und dann fängt man an, sich zu eilen. Und man eilt sich immer mehr. Jedes Mal, wenn man aufblickt, sieht man, dass es gar nicht weniger wird, was noch vor einem liegt. Und man strengt sich noch mehr an, man kriegt es mit der Angst, und zum Schluss ist man ganz außer Puste und kann nicht mehr. Und die Straße liegt immer noch vor einem. So darf man es nicht machen."
• Er dachte einige Zeit nach. Dann sprach er weiter: "Man darf nie an die ganze Straße auf einmal denken, verstehst du? Man muss nur an den nächsten Schritt denken, an den nächsten Atemzug, an den nächsten Besenstrich. Und immer wieder nur an den nächsten.
• Wieder hielt er inne und überlegte, ehe er hinzufügte: "Dann macht es Freude; das ist wichtig, dann macht man seine Sache gut. Und so soll es sein."
• Und abermals nach einer langen Pause fuhr er fort: "Auf einmal merkt man, dass man Schritt für Schritt die ganze Straße gemacht hat. Man hat gar nicht gemerkt wie und man ist nicht außer Puste." Er nickte vor sich hin und sagte abschließend: "Das ist wichtig."
• "Die können sicher sein, dass von Ihrer eingesparten Zeit nicht das kleinste bisschen verloren geht. Sie werden es schon merken, dass Ihnen nicht übrig bleibt."
• Genau: Alle Lücken werden wieder gefüllt. So oder so.
• Seine Arbeit macht ihm auf diese Weise überhaupt keinen Spaß mehr, aber das war ja nun auch nicht mehr wichtig.
• Er wurde immer nervöser und ruheloser, denn eines war seltsam: Von all der Zeit, die er einsparte, blieb ihm tatsächlich niemals etwas übrig. Sie verschwand einfach auf rätselhafte Weise und war nicht mehr da.
• Es war etwas wie eine blinde Besessenheit über ihn gekommen. Und wenn er manchmal mit Schrecken gewahr wurde, wie schnell und immer schneller seine Tage dahinrasten, dann sparte er nur umso verbissener.
• Denn jeder Mensch hat SEINE Zeit. Und nur solang sie wirklich die seine ist, bleibt sie lebendig
• Awareness, be here now, conscious. Take ownership of your time, your life
• "Nein, dass kann ich nicht", antwortete Meister Hora, "denn was die Menschen mit ihrer Zeit machen, darüber müssen sie selbst bestimmen. Sie müssen sie auch selbst verteidigen. ich kann sie ihnen nur zuteilen."
• "Denn so, wie ihr Augen habt, um das Licht zu sehen, und Ohren, um Klänge zu hören, so habt ihr ein Herz, um damit die Zeit wahrzunehmen."