You just reached at your mid-life, so these questions appear.
You must first determine what is your value in your work. What are you doing that nobody else can do in your company ? This is your real value !
Ask around you what people think of you by holding them an anonymous questionnaire, where you ask them what is the biggest point they like about you, and all the points they dislike.
Ask feedback whenever possible, it's difficult to know what we are, only others know it.
In my case, I had to quit game programming at 38, after 18 years of games. I'm now working in a start-up since 9 years, my life is more stable, and I've finished paying my house. I'm now 47, and want to evolve even more, so I communicate a lot, and try to improve my relationships with people.
Congratulations, I think you saved your life ! I hope you are happier now.
If your wife quit you so easily, it means that she didn't love you, she was expecting your money. I'm sure you'll find a better wife soon (probably in 2 years since our life changes by cycles of 7 years).
It's not easy to stop living a destructive life, and start following his dreams. I don't know what you'll do in a few years, but I'm already sure that you are a great guy.
And don't listen about people who think only about money: "He who dies with the most toys wins"
Since there was a double pricing (3614 was cheap, and 3615 was expensive), men had access to the 3615 part of meeting sites, while women had access to the 3614 part.
In my experience, it's quite possible to gain a conscious vantage on previously-unconscious biases, and subsequently lessen and/or compensate for them.
You just locate your own mind patterns, but you don't get a deep understanding on how it works internally.
In my opinion, it's impossible to understand our unconscious mind with thoughts, because the unconscious mind is much faster than our thoughts, and it takes a lot of time to consciously analyse only a fraction of our decisions. The more you analyse your behaviours, and the more you tend to constrain yourself.
From what I heard, zen masters are able to "observe" their unconscious mind during their actions, so it may be possible to access a deep understanding of ourselves with discipline.
While our investigation continues, we thought it would be a good idea to remind our members that one of the best ways to protect your privacy and security online is to craft a strong password, to change it frequently (at least once a quarter or every few months) and to not use the same password on multiple sites.
Why should I change my password if I use it only on their site ?
A lot of sites implement new kinds of input boxes, where your browser cannot save the password ! It's humanly impossible to remember all passwords.
A possible explanation about their behaviour is that they are addicted to pleasure. When life is tough (which is likely the case when you are poor, since TV explains all day long that success=money), you tend to find ways to stand it, and the easiest way is to seek pleasure. The constant seek of pleasure is addiction.
Playing games is an addiction, but it's not the most dangerous addiction (except when you spend more money than you earn).
I read somewhere that people who were able to stand frustration (=accepting not instant reward) were most successful in their lives than people searching for instant pleasure.
Sadly, my wife is very addicted to instant pleasure (food, television, shopping,...), so I'm well aware about this behavior.
All the brightest, most creative geniuses in a company mean nothing if their ideas aren't followed through.
I totally agree with you. There are 2 more pernicious effects to killing projects: 1) this sends a signal to all managers to focus on costs. So everybody just focus on reducing their budget and risks. All good ideas that would have been normally tested are buried, because it's too risky, or it costs some money. 2) this sends a signal to all creative people: we don't care about your ideas. If you have good ideas, it's better that you don't propose them to us, because either we'll refuse them, or if it's an excellent idea, it will be probably dropped after a few months of development, don't forget that we are cost-driven.
When a company gets money-driven and loses its values, it's as good as finished.
Luckily, my wife doesn't suffer from MS, but she has to lose weight in order to be operated (hips replacement). One of my old friends suffers from MS (he introduced me to sophrology and meditation, because he wanted to lessens his disease), but I guess he's dead now:-(
About my achievements, there are none, except perhaps a boost in self-confidence. I didn't get wealthy because of my work, but I did a massive burn-out during 8 years of my life (while working in the videogame industry), but I'm now pretty happy, even though life is always tough, but so full of lessons and meaningless at the same time.
About the duality concept, I agree with you, but I believe that I'm still "something". Trying to find its location may solve this duality. I also think that the cycle of reincarnations stops when you removed all your beliefs, even the belief of reincarnation, it's quite recursive;-)
Recently, I've stopped trying to understand myself and the others. Trying to understand reduces yourself, instead of trying to push your own limits. I realized that I was limitless, but I'm also very lazy, so I doubt I'll ever get rich, except internally.
The link is about Positive Psychology, and it's Ben-Shahar's course (mentioned in the book you mentioned, I'll read it when I'll have more time).
EQ is interesting in order to measure what kind of coping we are able in our relationships. Epstein's book about "Constructive Thinking" seems a lot more interesting than EQ.
I have my own personal approach, because I started with a psychoanalysis while practicing some caycedian sophrology, I experienced the different levels of consciousness. I stopped doing psychoanalysis because I realized that it reinforced the mental process of thoughts. I had my peak performance moment (winning a national championship), then had to take familial responsibilities (my wife is in a wheelchair). All these events changed me deeply, but I still don't believe in brain.
I have a large IQ (>140), and I realized that obsessing about IQ is useless.
My deep belief (thanks to sophrology and zazen) is that my "reality" is a small point in my body located around my belly button. The brain is just a sense, like vision, audition or smell. This sense is working with thoughts. So what we are studying with brain is not what we truly are, but how this sense works. A lot of our brain illnesses originate from our belly bacteria (like multiple sclerosis). They may attack the brain when our brain has problems coping with reality.
IMHO, observing the brain behaviour is less important than discovering our "true" nature.
About measure, I disagree, I know EQ, but I don't like too much the principle. I'm for the zen approach, which is to let your thoughts pass, we are unhappy because of our thoughts. As long as we are in the instant present, we live fully. I like the zen quote: "When I eat, I eat, and when I sleep, I sleep". Whatever (positive or negative) happens at me is a lesson, what can I learn from it ? Can I unlearn my bad thoughts' habits, that took so much time to acquire ? This is the secret of happiness.
In fact, neuroscience and psychology points the opposite direction: happiness leads to success.
I don't know where you read that, but psychology and neurosciences (there are several) will never be able to show that, because happiness and success are totally unrelated !
Firstly, because you need to define what success is. If success is living a life doing a lot of things, you'll get a rich life, but probably not a wealthy one. If success is making a lot of money, it just means that you tend to take risks, it's like betting your life on your choices. The risk of getting unsuccessful is greater than the risk of getting successful. In any case, I don't see how this can lead to happiness. Happiness is not related to comfort, money or other external results. A poor guy is probably happier than a rich guy, because his happiness will not depend on money, while the rich guy will focus his life on work and money, and it's impossible to succeed your life personally and at work.
Secondly, because if your happiness is related to success, it means that if you fail, you are unhappy. When you fail, it means that you need to understand the lessons of your failure, and try to correct this. Perhaps should you not take risks in the future ?
Please, stop reading/listening gurus who try to sell their method to become rich and happy. They are just marketeers, who sell themselves. The happy guys never brag about being happy.
An article at Massively goes through some of the lessons the video game industry needs to learn from this situation.
Frankly, these lessons have been discovered 20 years ago in video games. They are still not learned, and the same problems appear again. I've been a game developer most of my life, and what I saw is that egos were ruining games.
A single guy has an idea, and is able to attract people to invest in his idea. The problem is that having the idea and selling it is the easiest part of a project. After getting money, the boss wants to reduce the risk of his "baby", so he hires a lot of people (who never wrote a game), and a lot of management to handle all these people (perferably with a lot of diplomas, diplomas=less risks). Only one bad manager can spoil the whole pyramid, and it's probably what happened.
This can be easily avoided with decent people (people knowing how to write games), and less management (to avoid useless effort), but hiring people helps to feel your own power (and self-importance), so the same shit will appear again and again.
Step 1: Search for a solution as if my life depends on it. In general, I find bad solutions at this stage. This is called "bad spontaneous solutions", I tend to defend them, even though they don't solve the problem. Step 2: Stop searching for a solution. It's difficult to stop searching, but there are several ways to do that, like sleeping or concentrating on something else but not using logical reasoning. It's important to forget about the problem. Step 3: The solution appears !
It's a mysterious process, but I applied this technique to most parts of my life and it works, for example, I found my wife this way.
Sure, software patents are good for open source, like HIV is good for fidelity.
What sickens me is that people still try to sell their poor ideas with moralization. Using categories like "good/bad" or "nice/evil" is the typical way it's used. This way, if you disagree with my opinion, you are "bad/evil", while I'm "nice/good".
BTW, I think that software patents are a huge waste, both of time and money. All this energy is spent on trying to defend ideas, but ideas are unlimited and patents are limited. Instead of trying to protect your ideas, try to find new ideas !
Personally I think it's the best product ever sold by MS.
No, their best product is the Microsoft Trackball Optical. I use mine since at least 7 years, and it's still working perfectly. It's PS2/USB compatible, so it plugs on any kind of computer. It's also easy to clean.
I cannot use a computer without it, because of my carpal tunnel syndrome.
We should not allow copyright on things that do not exist physically.
And I prefer that Disney keeps distributing Steamboat Willie in their Disneylands, and stops perverting the system due to their unreasonable requests on copyright.
Our artistic culture is disappearing because a few companies try to protect their work.
I attended a conference about how Google engineers work.
You are right about the 20%: it's not encouraged anymore, but it seems that you can ask for it.
Google manages people with Excel, and managers rate them every year (trying to fire 5% of their employees, aka the underperformers), it's a very tough environment.
I realized that the 20% was used to buy social peace, because Google's culture is internally very competitive, and not about goofing off at all ! Given that the 20% are not pushed anymore, the turn-over will probably increase (and it will not be limited to the underperformers, but the brilliant minds who will prefer a less competitive environment).
I believe that innovation stopped when they closed Google Labs. This sent a message to their developers: if you have a good idea, it's better to create your own startup and sell it to Google. And I'm sure that's what happens now !
Being myself without diploma, but with 26 years of experience (I'm in my middle fourties), I think that you should try to find what is your value for a company, and make yourself known in this area.
In my case, I realized that I have technical skills, but my human skills were most important (perhaps 30% technical skills, and 70% human skills). So I'm trying to become a coach, and competition in this domain is tough, so I had to learn how to sell my product: me.
It's not as obvious as it seems. You need to work to increase your visibility:
- I'm using linkedin to create my own network
- I'm using a blog to convey my ideas
- I'm trying to discover new ideas, which might be of interest
- I'll probably write a book (not for the money, but for the reputation, you can easily become an expert with a single book)
Degrees are useless if your goal is to make money ("making money" is a terrible goal, you can make money in almost any domain, as long as you believe in what you do), you really need to know what you want to do, and this comes after discovering what you don't want to do anymore.
After that, you need to discover what you want to share with people (I call that "passion"). I recommend that you keep your current job, and negotiate to attend all the conferences about your subject. You'll discover that most of the speakers don't master the domains they talk about, and that you can do a better job than them.
The next step is presenting conferences related to your domain. After a few years, you'll be well known and you'll be able to earn your life with your passion.
In my case, I had to learn how to speak in public, and how to convey my ideas with powerful words, but I'm still working at my job, since I don't earn enough money with my new part-time activity. My way requires dedication, but I don't take tremendous risks, since I still work at my last job. I'll be able to quit when I have enough business.
Slashdot Mirror
Definitely not one of the hardest sudokus.
There is a tool to compute the difficulty of a puzzle, and you can also download a massive database of hard sudokus (5 millions+):
http://code.google.com/p/skfr-sudoku-fast-rating/
For reference, this one is rated 10.7:
http://forum.enjoysudoku.com/the-hardest-sudokus-new-thread-t6539-420.html
BTW, there is a database of 31804 puzzles of difficulty 11 and above:
http://gpenet.pagesperso-orange.fr/downloads/hard11.zip
Exactly 7 have a rank of 11.9.
You just reached at your mid-life, so these questions appear.
You must first determine what is your value in your work.
What are you doing that nobody else can do in your company ?
This is your real value !
Ask around you what people think of you by holding them an anonymous questionnaire, where you ask them what is the biggest point they like about you, and all the points they dislike.
Ask feedback whenever possible, it's difficult to know what we are, only others know it.
In my case, I had to quit game programming at 38, after 18 years of games.
I'm now working in a start-up since 9 years, my life is more stable, and I've finished paying my house.
I'm now 47, and want to evolve even more, so I communicate a lot, and try to improve my relationships with people.
Good luck !
Congratulations, I think you saved your life !
I hope you are happier now.
If your wife quit you so easily, it means that she didn't love you, she was expecting your money.
I'm sure you'll find a better wife soon (probably in 2 years since our life changes by cycles of 7 years).
It's not easy to stop living a destructive life, and start following his dreams.
I don't know what you'll do in a few years, but I'm already sure that you are a great guy.
And don't listen about people who think only about money:
"He who dies with the most toys wins"
Without jumping in the agile bandwagon, I would recommend to read the Theory X & Y:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y
Most of the managers are using Theory X. Agile ones use Theory Y.
It was also a wonderful tool to meet people.
I met my wife on the Minitel 17 years ago.
Since there was a double pricing (3614 was cheap, and 3615 was expensive), men had access to the 3615 part of meeting sites, while women had access to the 3614 part.
IP just spurs IP.
Maybe innovation spurs IP, but the inverse is a lie.
When the finality of a system becomes the system itself, there is something wrong.
It's like bureaucracy, which leads to more bureaucracy.
How can we simplify the whole IP system ?
"I'm in heaven" implies I'm on the recieving end of a blow job.
Not exactly, it depends if the person giving you a blow job is a woman or not.
In my experience, it's quite possible to gain a conscious vantage on previously-unconscious biases, and subsequently lessen and/or compensate for them.
You just locate your own mind patterns, but you don't get a deep understanding on how it works internally.
In my opinion, it's impossible to understand our unconscious mind with thoughts, because the unconscious mind is much faster than our thoughts, and it takes a lot of time to consciously analyse only a fraction of our decisions.
The more you analyse your behaviours, and the more you tend to constrain yourself.
From what I heard, zen masters are able to "observe" their unconscious mind during their actions, so it may be possible to access a deep understanding of ourselves with discipline.
Because they admit that the accounts were compromised:
http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-passwords-compromised/
and they blame the users (remember: they were compromised, not the users !):
http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/updating-your-password-on-linkedin-and-other-account-security-best-practices/
While our investigation continues, we thought it would be a good idea to remind our members that one of the best ways to protect your privacy and security online is to craft a strong password, to change it frequently (at least once a quarter or every few months) and to not use the same password on multiple sites.
Why should I change my password if I use it only on their site ?
A lot of sites implement new kinds of input boxes, where your browser cannot save the password !
It's humanly impossible to remember all passwords.
It could be worse: they could force users to change their password every month !
A possible explanation about their behaviour is that they are addicted to pleasure.
When life is tough (which is likely the case when you are poor, since TV explains all day long that success=money), you tend to find ways to stand it, and the easiest way is to seek pleasure.
The constant seek of pleasure is addiction.
Playing games is an addiction, but it's not the most dangerous addiction (except when you spend more money than you earn).
I read somewhere that people who were able to stand frustration (=accepting not instant reward) were most successful in their lives than people searching for instant pleasure.
Sadly, my wife is very addicted to instant pleasure (food, television, shopping, ...), so I'm well aware about this behavior.
All the brightest, most creative geniuses in a company mean nothing if their ideas aren't followed through.
I totally agree with you.
There are 2 more pernicious effects to killing projects:
1) this sends a signal to all managers to focus on costs. So everybody just focus on reducing their budget and risks.
All good ideas that would have been normally tested are buried, because it's too risky, or it costs some money.
2) this sends a signal to all creative people: we don't care about your ideas.
If you have good ideas, it's better that you don't propose them to us, because either we'll refuse them, or if it's an excellent idea, it will be probably dropped after a few months of development, don't forget that we are cost-driven.
When a company gets money-driven and loses its values, it's as good as finished.
Luckily, my wife doesn't suffer from MS, but she has to lose weight in order to be operated (hips replacement). :-(
One of my old friends suffers from MS (he introduced me to sophrology and meditation, because he wanted to lessens his disease), but I guess he's dead now
About my achievements, there are none, except perhaps a boost in self-confidence.
I didn't get wealthy because of my work, but I did a massive burn-out during 8 years of my life (while working in the videogame industry), but I'm now pretty happy, even though life is always tough, but so full of lessons and meaningless at the same time.
About the duality concept, I agree with you, but I believe that I'm still "something". Trying to find its location may solve this duality. ;-)
I also think that the cycle of reincarnations stops when you removed all your beliefs, even the belief of reincarnation, it's quite recursive
Recently, I've stopped trying to understand myself and the others. Trying to understand reduces yourself, instead of trying to push your own limits.
I realized that I was limitless, but I'm also very lazy, so I doubt I'll ever get rich, except internally.
The link is about Positive Psychology, and it's Ben-Shahar's course (mentioned in the book you mentioned, I'll read it when I'll have more time).
EQ is interesting in order to measure what kind of coping we are able in our relationships.
Epstein's book about "Constructive Thinking" seems a lot more interesting than EQ.
I have my own personal approach, because I started with a psychoanalysis while practicing some caycedian sophrology, I experienced the different levels of consciousness.
I stopped doing psychoanalysis because I realized that it reinforced the mental process of thoughts.
I had my peak performance moment (winning a national championship), then had to take familial responsibilities (my wife is in a wheelchair).
All these events changed me deeply, but I still don't believe in brain.
I have a large IQ (>140), and I realized that obsessing about IQ is useless.
My deep belief (thanks to sophrology and zazen) is that my "reality" is a small point in my body located around my belly button.
The brain is just a sense, like vision, audition or smell. This sense is working with thoughts.
So what we are studying with brain is not what we truly are, but how this sense works.
A lot of our brain illnesses originate from our belly bacteria (like multiple sclerosis). They may attack the brain when our brain has problems coping with reality.
IMHO, observing the brain behaviour is less important than discovering our "true" nature.
Here is a good read, and it's free:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k29669&pageid=icb.page135336
About measure, I disagree, I know EQ, but I don't like too much the principle.
I'm for the zen approach, which is to let your thoughts pass, we are unhappy because of our thoughts.
As long as we are in the instant present, we live fully.
I like the zen quote: "When I eat, I eat, and when I sleep, I sleep".
Whatever (positive or negative) happens at me is a lesson, what can I learn from it ?
Can I unlearn my bad thoughts' habits, that took so much time to acquire ?
This is the secret of happiness.
No, I didn't miss your point, your message was not very clear.
Thanks for the article, it contains a lot of information, but mostly statistical.
The goal of our life is to live a happy life, but a lot of people focus on getting wealthy instead.
Frankly, success or failure are not very important, as long as you can be happy.
In fact, neuroscience and psychology points the opposite direction: happiness leads to success.
I don't know where you read that, but psychology and neurosciences (there are several) will never be able to show that, because happiness and success are totally unrelated !
Firstly, because you need to define what success is. If success is living a life doing a lot of things, you'll get a rich life, but probably not a wealthy one.
If success is making a lot of money, it just means that you tend to take risks, it's like betting your life on your choices.
The risk of getting unsuccessful is greater than the risk of getting successful.
In any case, I don't see how this can lead to happiness.
Happiness is not related to comfort, money or other external results.
A poor guy is probably happier than a rich guy, because his happiness will not depend on money, while the rich guy will focus his life on work and money, and it's impossible to succeed your life personally and at work.
Secondly, because if your happiness is related to success, it means that if you fail, you are unhappy.
When you fail, it means that you need to understand the lessons of your failure, and try to correct this.
Perhaps should you not take risks in the future ?
Please, stop reading/listening gurus who try to sell their method to become rich and happy. They are just marketeers, who sell themselves.
The happy guys never brag about being happy.
An article at Massively goes through some of the lessons the video game industry needs to learn from this situation.
Frankly, these lessons have been discovered 20 years ago in video games.
They are still not learned, and the same problems appear again.
I've been a game developer most of my life, and what I saw is that egos were ruining games.
A single guy has an idea, and is able to attract people to invest in his idea.
The problem is that having the idea and selling it is the easiest part of a project.
After getting money, the boss wants to reduce the risk of his "baby", so he hires a lot of people (who never wrote a game), and a lot of management to handle all these people (perferably with a lot of diplomas, diplomas=less risks).
Only one bad manager can spoil the whole pyramid, and it's probably what happened.
This can be easily avoided with decent people (people knowing how to write games), and less management (to avoid useless effort), but hiring people helps to feel your own power (and self-importance), so the same shit will appear again and again.
My recipe for creativity:
Step 1: Search for a solution as if my life depends on it. In general, I find bad solutions at this stage. This is called "bad spontaneous solutions", I tend to defend them, even though they don't solve the problem.
Step 2: Stop searching for a solution. It's difficult to stop searching, but there are several ways to do that, like sleeping or concentrating on something else but not using logical reasoning. It's important to forget about the problem.
Step 3: The solution appears !
It's a mysterious process, but I applied this technique to most parts of my life and it works, for example, I found my wife this way.
Sure, software patents are good for open source, like HIV is good for fidelity.
What sickens me is that people still try to sell their poor ideas with moralization.
Using categories like "good/bad" or "nice/evil" is the typical way it's used.
This way, if you disagree with my opinion, you are "bad/evil", while I'm "nice/good".
BTW, I think that software patents are a huge waste, both of time and money.
All this energy is spent on trying to defend ideas, but ideas are unlimited and patents are limited.
Instead of trying to protect your ideas, try to find new ideas !
Personally I think it's the best product ever sold by MS.
No, their best product is the Microsoft Trackball Optical.
I use mine since at least 7 years, and it's still working perfectly.
It's PS2/USB compatible, so it plugs on any kind of computer.
It's also easy to clean.
I cannot use a computer without it, because of my carpal tunnel syndrome.
Best trackball ever !
I wrote: without digital copies.
We should not allow copyright on things that do not exist physically.
And I prefer that Disney keeps distributing Steamboat Willie in their Disneylands, and stops perverting the system due to their unreasonable requests on copyright.
Our artistic culture is disappearing because a few companies try to protect their work.
I propose the following change to copyright:
as long as you sell your product, it's copyrighted.
When the product is no more officially available in a physical way (not a digital one), its copyright disappears.
This way, Disney can continue using Mickey or whatever they want without corrupting the whole system.
I attended a conference about how Google engineers work.
You are right about the 20%: it's not encouraged anymore, but it seems that you can ask for it.
Google manages people with Excel, and managers rate them every year (trying to fire 5% of their employees, aka the underperformers), it's a very tough environment.
I realized that the 20% was used to buy social peace, because Google's culture is internally very competitive, and not about goofing off at all !
Given that the 20% are not pushed anymore, the turn-over will probably increase (and it will not be limited to the underperformers, but the brilliant minds who will prefer a less competitive environment).
I believe that innovation stopped when they closed Google Labs.
This sent a message to their developers: if you have a good idea, it's better to create your own startup and sell it to Google.
And I'm sure that's what happens now !
Being myself without diploma, but with 26 years of experience (I'm in my middle fourties), I think that you should try to find what is your value for a company, and make yourself known in this area.
In my case, I realized that I have technical skills, but my human skills were most important (perhaps 30% technical skills, and 70% human skills).
So I'm trying to become a coach, and competition in this domain is tough, so I had to learn how to sell my product: me.
It's not as obvious as it seems.
You need to work to increase your visibility:
- I'm using linkedin to create my own network
- I'm using a blog to convey my ideas
- I'm trying to discover new ideas, which might be of interest
- I'll probably write a book (not for the money, but for the reputation, you can easily become an expert with a single book)
Degrees are useless if your goal is to make money ("making money" is a terrible goal, you can make money in almost any domain, as long as you believe in what you do), you really need to know what you want to do, and this comes after discovering what you don't want to do anymore.
After that, you need to discover what you want to share with people (I call that "passion").
I recommend that you keep your current job, and negotiate to attend all the conferences about your subject.
You'll discover that most of the speakers don't master the domains they talk about, and that you can do a better job than them.
The next step is presenting conferences related to your domain.
After a few years, you'll be well known and you'll be able to earn your life with your passion.
In my case, I had to learn how to speak in public, and how to convey my ideas with powerful words, but I'm still working at my job, since I don't earn enough money with my new part-time activity.
My way requires dedication, but I don't take tremendous risks, since I still work at my last job.
I'll be able to quit when I have enough business.