What if I don't need it?
Dec 20, 2020
Recently I read the The moneyless man: a year of freeconimic living by Mark Boyle. It his memoir on a year of living without using money. In short he lived in a trailer on a piece of land which he was allowed to use in return for working 2-3 on the farm. He had to cater for his own food, heat and amusement. He was pretty hardcore with it all. …
What am I working on? Q4 2020
Nov 06, 2020
Google Professional Dev Ops Engineer Currently studying for the Dev Ops exam. Passed the Data Engineer and Cloud Architect ones in the previous months. My plan was to go through one exam every 2 months which seems like a nice pace together with work pressure. For Data Engineer and Architect there were 2 books to read which prepared you for the actual exam including some test exams. For the Dev Ops certification there are 2 books but they are on Site Reliability Engineering at Google, both interesting books but more about the concept instead of just learning facts for the exam. I am not sure which kind I like better but I will probably know if and when I pass the Dev Ops exam. …
Digital simplicity
Oct 24, 2020
By now you might have read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. I know I have and I was intrigued by the idea. Although I would like to take it a bit further than just social media and online presence. I have been using a password manager for multiple years which allowed me to create lots of accounts with different passwords. Over the years I have managed to accrue 152 separate accounts and passwords. This is not minimalism. Using the Pareto principle of the 20/80 percent rule I can conclude that I only use about 30 of those accounts most of the time. …
Get rid of your stuff
Oct 20, 2020
Don’t ask whether you need an item now but if you need for what you want to become. When your are doubting whether to get rid of it or not, here are some tips: If you are suprised you even own this, get rid of it If it has cobwebs on it, get rid of it If you have two or more, get rid of one. This does not count for consumables Would you buy it again if you didn’t have the item but had the money instead? No? Get rid of it. Just looking at it causes you stress, get rid of it. Stuff you can get rid of anyway …
Addicted to Achievement
Oct 12, 2020
This post is inspired by me getting 299 out of 300 minutes of exercise for a Strava badge. I contemplated starting another activity, or even changing my last saved activity to include another minute. But I could withhold myself in the moment and tell myself that it did not matter. But it did cost a lot of effort to do that. In fact holding myself accountable costs a lot of effort. …
Maintenance
Aug 06, 2020
Stuff either upgrades, maintains or degrades its state. If you neglect your things, they will degrade. If you maintain them on schedule, they will stay maintained. And when you replace parts or make things better it will be upgraded. The first thing is simple, you have to do nothing. Your stuff won’t last long and you will be forced to either by new or upgrade prematurely. Maintaining costs time and space. Space because you need tools to maintain stuff. A bicycle does not take much space, but if you want to replace a part you need the following: …