Upside of Stress

Somehow, just by chance, I feel the last three books I have read are connected. And this last one, has been a real slap in my face. And deserved.

In the last years, I have complained about stress at work, dissatisfaction, etc. And questions about what’s my goal in life. What I am really doing apart from working (and climbing and reading and cooking). As well, this is connected to my breakup.

I have changed job twice, and still in the same situation to be honest. I knew the problems wasn’t the job. It was me. It was my expectations. But still stuck.

I have read a lot about Stoicism, Buddhism, meditation, etc. And I really believe on those philosophies as the ground stones of my moral.

But I didn’t lead by example. That is the best piece of advice that my first manager in UK (and the person who gave me the chance to work here) told me and have always try to live by.

The book reminded me the worse experiences of my life: dead, heartbreaks, letdowns, etc. But then reminded me of the growth I experimented after that. I forgot those futsal games that were so intense, those kumites with people much more stronger than me, those difficult exams, competitions, races. I forgot the satisfaction of giving all, the learning, the challenge, the growth from defeat and failures. Growth.

And I know, without that stress, I wouldn’t have improved. So, I have been making things worse trying to escape it.

As the book says, pain is part of life, one way or the other, so you’r better off to deal with it face on because there are too many things out of our control. But we are in control of the most important one, ourselves.

So at the end, it is all about your mindset. The worse moments can bring the best of you. Because you are not alone there.

And this is a new habit I want back to the core of my moral. And think it is already working. For the last weeks I have been struggling with an injure and I knew my feelings about work were not helping. This week, I was nearly alone most of the week dealing with the major projects. Normally I would be very stressed. But I tried to think as challenges. Maybe the week was quieter than normal but I felt better at work and in my body.

I want to see if these are just words or a real shift. More challenging times will come (for sure).

youtube-dl extract specific audio portion

I was watching a concert and I wanted to take just the audio of a song, no video. I knew you could download the full audio from videos pretty easily with youtube-dl but now just wanted an specific portion. Thanks to these links (link1 and link2) I managed to get what I wanted:

$ youtube-dl --youtube-skip-dash-manifest -g "VIDEO_URL"

# copy the second url (audio) from the above command output

$ audio_url="AUDIO_URL_FROM_ABOVE"

$ ffmpeg -i "$audio_url" -ss 00:00:30 -t 00:05:20.0 -q:a 0 -map a sample.mp3

# PLAY IT!

$ vlc sample.mp3

Atomic Habits

I finished this ebook last week. It has been interesting to read about some techniques that I have used without really noticing like adding/removing things from my visual radar.

I believe that the key is to create your mindset and grow little by little (atomic). This in an investment in the long run, on you.

The big picture for building habits:

  • Obvious, Attractive, Easy and Satisfying:

The big picture for removing habits:

  • Invisible, Unattractive, Hard and Unsatisfying.

And this book makes references to “Man’s search for meaning”.

Some other notes from the summary:

  • Happiness is simple the absence of desire (The richest is not the one who has more things but the one with less needs – my grandmother told me that once)
  • Being curious is better than being smart.
  • Emotions drives behaviour. Your response tends to follow your emotions.
  • Suffering drives progress.
  • Satisfaction = Craving – Reward
  • Feelings come both before and after behaviour: Cue -> Craving (feeling) -> Response -> Reward (feeling)

Man’s search for meaning

I finished this book a bit more than a week ago. It is quite short but very dense in meaning. I didnt know it was from a Holocaust survivor and he was a psychiatrist. The first parts is mainly about his experience in the concentration camps. It is not gory in details. It is detailed in his mindset and psychology of the prisioners. It is amazing how in the most extreme circumstances (this is real stress), human beings can survive (by a thin line though). And as well, luck. He mentions the three phases of a prisoner: admission (shock), camp routine (brutality, gave up, apathy) and release (another shock, as your reason for meaning can be non-existing… family gone, society gone, etc)

It is a book I need to read again.

I have some notes:

logotherapy

Existentialism: To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. That is for me, it is Buddhism. And each man/woman needs to find its own.

The last human of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances. It is like stoicism.

Nietzsche: He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.

It is hope, it is meaning.

It is not what we expect from life but rather what life expects from us. Our answer must consist in right action and right conduct. Again, like stoicism.

And sometimes, you just have to accept fate and bear your cross.

Man needs tension, can’t thrive in tensionless state and find meaning in life.

“Sunday neurosis” – kind of depression happens at the end of a (busy) week and during the free time you notice the lack of meaning that you can’t ignore – existential vacuum. This happened to me for many years, mainly during my first job. Then in UK, studying for certifications the first years and afterwards, climbing on Sunday cleared that feeling. It was the first time I felt at peace before starting a new week.

Tahini Choco Brownies

This is a recipe recommended by a good friend. It has been a long time since I have baked my choco brownies but I decided to try this recipe as I had my homemade tahini.

Ingredients:

  • 100g butter
  • 100g dark chocolate (85%)
  • 15g 100% cocoa powder
  • 3 large free range eggs
  • 175g sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla paste
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 180g tahini
  • 50g plain flour

Process

  • pre-heat oven at 175C. I used a rounded cake tin (26cm diameter – a bit smaller is better). Cover the whole tin with baking paper and use a bit of butter on top of the paper.
  • In a sauce pan, at medium heat, melt the butter. Then remove from the heat, and add the chocolate and cocoa powder, whisking until smooth.
  • In a bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt until properly mixed and thickens up a bit. Add the tahini, mix well. Then fold the flour.
  • Take 1/2 of the tahini mix to a different bowl. The rest, add it to the chocolate mix. Fold until fully combined.
  • Pour the chocolate mix into the cake tin, spreading evenly.
  • Then add on top the reserved tahini mix, with a stick, swirl the mix so you have bit of the tahini mix inside the chocolate mix.
  • Bake for 25m or less. Check the center is moist and sides are set. If not, bake for a couple of minutes more.
  • Remove from the oven and let it cool down for 30 minutes.
  • Cut in squares and try.

To be honest, mine were a bit dry, no moist enough so it is better to check early than leave it in the oven too long.

The taste is different, the tahini gives it a nutty flavour. It is not very chocolatey neither sweet. I need to try again.

Rise

I am not very keen of sportsmen/women biographies but I decided to read this one, after watching this video some time ago.

Although Siya is still young, he relates about his career from a very challenging upbringing to the summit of his sport career.

But what I liked from the book, it is not just the path to success but the persona. How he relates to the problems of South Africa, to his own personal problems. In a very macho sport, it is difficult to imagine somebody talking about his feelings, his wrongs, his addictions. This is another very interesting video about mental heath issues from a “big boy”.

As he shows in the book, he found help in his wife and faith. And admits he is not perfect.

There is a important point about success and values. It is more important to be a well-rounded person than a top rugby player. But we live in a society/world that we only focus in the best, the winner (who takes all) And those are the values we give to kids. As a famous coach said, the result takes care by itself. That means, if you put the work .

You would expect the book would finish in his top achievement but not, if follows with what it is really important to him, make a different in the society. From supporting campaigns against violence to women (and it is not just a problem in SA, we had similar problem in Spain) and setup the kolisifoundation.

Poha

A very good friend of mine cooked Poha for me last week. It was delicious! I had ingredients left so I tried on my own:

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of flake rice
  • 2 medium onion chopped
  • 2 carrots gratted
  • 1/4 cup of peanuts
  • 1 tsp tumeric
  • 2 tsp of mustard grains
  • optional: 1tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 small green chilli chopped
  • 1 tsp coconut oil
  • 1 bunch coriander chopped
  • 1 bunch curry leaves
  • 1/2 lemon juice

Process:

  • Wash the rice flakes in cold water for 10 seconds. Let is rest after that.
  • In a hot pan, fry the peanuts with the coconut oil. Once a bit brown, take the peanuts out and let it rest.
  • Add the mustard grains and tumeric in the pan, let them toast a bit, dont burn it!
  • Add the chopped onion. Stir until if get a yellow color and soften up.
  • Add green chilli, stir
  • Add curry leaves, stir
  • Add grated carrot.
  • Add flake rice and peanuts. Add a bit of salt.
  • Mix all well, rice should get a yellow color.
  • Taste it, the rice shouldnt be hard. Add the lemon juice and retire the pan.
  • Add the coriander and ready to server!

PD: This can be used as inspiration.

The Phoenix Project

I wanted to read this book for some time. I thought it was going to be a technical book but it was a novel and felt like a thriller! and IT thriller if you can believe it. While I was reading it, I felt quite tense at some points, like, “I have been there!”. Although I am not a developer, I felt the pain mentioned in the book. I have been like that I spend many years in a good devops environment. When I started there, I didnt have a clue what devops menat but I learnt on the job training. I wish the networks world could be more “devops” but as we nearly always relay in 3rd party vendors to provide equipment, they always want you to lock in their product. Still, it is possible, but you need to have the drive (and time) and some support from your employer.

One of the things that surprise me from the devops methodology is that is based in manufacturing. I read in the past about Kaizen but now, I can see the connection. One of the main references is the book, The Goal.

And another very important point, nothing of these things work if people are not on board. You can have the smartest people around but if people dont buy in, nothing is accomplished.

So I like the idea of quick iterations (return of investment is received by the company and customer sooner) where you get earlier feedback, interactions and communication between all teams, awareness for the business that IT is everywhere, constant testing/experimentation (chaos monkey, antifragility), kanban boards / flow models to visualize process and constraints (WIP), constant learning, etc.

It was interesting at some point in the book where the main characters where interviewing the top people in the company to gather info about what is important for them and what means successful results and bad days. Then map all that to IT process. From there you can see what is clearly important and what is not. So you can focus in value.

Other things I learned is about the types of work we do:

  • Business projects
  • Internal projects
  • Changes
  • Unplanned work

And that unplanned work is the killer for any attempt to have a process like a manufacturing plant.

As well, based on “The Goal”, there are a lot of mentions about the “Three Ways”:

  • Find your constraint: maximize flow -> reduce batch, reduce intervals, increase quality to detect failures before moving to next steps.
  • Exploit your constraint: fast and constant flow of feedback.
  • Subordinate your constraint: high-trust culture -> dynamic, disciplined and scientific approach to experiment and risks.

In summary, I enjoyed the book. It was engaging, easy to digest and I learned!

Doom

I have never been a hardcore gamer but I remember spending many hours playing DOOM2 in PC. I never played online but I have definitely clear memories of how fast paced was the game and the kind of dark/horror atmosphere. It was quite unique at that time. And to be honest, I didnt feel it was that violent, keeping that I was a teenager and the shooting of Columbine was recent. For the record, I never completed the last phase.

I finish this book about the creators of DOOM and its origins. I had heard about John Carmack from a good friend but I never dag further in the subject so it was interesting to find out about the origins of Carmack and John Romero, how the learned to program and got to create a new culture/wave of games. I like how the games evolved in the book (although it was released in 2004) and nowadays you see how far everything has gone from technology to business size.

I didnt know Carmack was behind all the 3D engines, the evolution of them, the first usage of dedicated 3D graphic cards, etc. I think the last first person shooter I played was “Return to the Castle of Wolfenstein” and it was really good. And this was I managed to finish it. After there was a crazy about playing online that somehow I never got interested. I remember one of the games that hook me at that time was Commandos. What a great series of games was that.

It is interesting how their success was as well later their doom…. they enjoyed working long hours and playing, how the different personalities set them for the stardom. But once money and fame came, things changed and seems all fell apart.

So yes, it was a nice read and good culture fix.

3xGnochi

A couple of weeks ago I fancied gnochi. I have already done it before but this time I went free style and I did something from this video. Fry the gnochi for a bit to give them a crunchy texture.

As I didnt calculate properly, I made a massive potato dough so I tried three different methods with ingredients I had at hand.

Ingredients:

  • 4 potatoes (that’s a lot)
  • 1 egg
  • plain flour
  • salt + pepper
  • olive oil for frying

version 1

  • sun dried tomatoes
  • broccoli
  • fresh baby tomatoes

version 2

  • sesame seeds
  • just a bit of soy sauce

version 3

  • broccoli
  • courgette
  • capers

I was quite happy with the result so I will try similar version or will experiment with anything I have around.