Andreas Happe: life
Luxury is Slavery
It’s weakness. Well at least un-enjoyed luxury that has become an everyday event is. This has nothing to do with morals. Luxury costs money. Making money makes you dependant and consumes your free time, it reduces your financial freedom. So if you’re spending your life on luxury make sure that it counts and you’re enjoying it every moment.
Review and New Year's resolutions
Yeah, let’s make some new year’s resolutions so that I can feel bad breaking them. The big ones are: Stop smoking. And nail-biting. Both might be the same outlet of my nervousness, let’s see if I can get them under control. Start doing Yoga and/or Meditation again. To be honest, this will be needed to get resolution #1 to work. Continue climbing. Alas my left wrist joint seems to have suffered sometime last year – I’ll gonna go to the doctor, but might have to reduce my bouldering for a bit.
Cleaning Up
With the year’s end comes the time for reviews and cleanups. Reducing cruft allows your mind to be free, with it comes a sense of closure and empowerement. Otherwise all my possessions would drag me down. Stuff I really like to do at this time is: review existing bank accounts and service contracts (like phone/internet/power plans). Reduce them to maintain some sense of control. Books: I hoard them even if most of them are not exactly Pulitzer-price materiel.
Indulgence Galore!
We’re living in a world of indulgence and seem not to cherish the small (or larger) daily treats anymore. As a cousin of mine once noted: we are able to go out for coffee and food daily without thinking to much of it’s costs. We’re the lucky few but somehow forgot about that. We’re privileged but we’ve got accustomed to it. Living in Austria our grand-parents and parents started with almost nothing after the second world war.
The Lazy Engineer
Recently I’ve switched my working day to a more enjoyable pace – and noticed that my productivity rose too. Too many friends claimed that I’m just plain lazily so this post tries to clarify my mode of operation. The basic idea is to reduce procrastination and improve my attention span through voluntary self-censorship. Some caveat beforehands: I am working as self-employed independent software contractor, thus my work has some unique properties: