Over at Nextcloud they are talking about digital sovereignty. The phrase “Europe is a digital colony.” is correctly describing the current state of the affairs.
I am all for digital sovereignty and just looking at IT, I think we have all the open-source tools needed to achieve this at least for e.g. school system and state administration. We would probably save money and actually create job opportunities. Here a couple of examples:
Why do schools in Germany use Microsoft powered computers to teach kids basic computer literacy? Linux powered computers are more then capable to do this and kids will not even notice it, as they are not “locked in” to M$ by their employer.
Why doesn't the German administration go to German companies (Strato, 1&1, ...) and get them to host the servers centrally for e.g. all schools in the state? This would probably propel the digitization on the next level, protect the privacy of our kids and create jobs.
On the other hand in the industry, why do major German automotive OEMs seek alliances with US or China based companies to advance areas like e.g. infotainment or autonomous driving, when it's clear that they are the junior partners in those co-operations?
Don't we have universities, engineers, scientists of our own? Did Europeans become so stupid, or are we simply lazy to learn the “hard stuff”?
Very interesting article on Lifehacker, as it hit the moment in my life.
My stress levels, measured by a Garmin watch, go up if I am in a meeting where I need to talk or present something, but also if I had a pizza, drank a beer or went running.
As the article states, some of measurable data is related to „real“ stress but other stuff is actually a positive arousal of the nervous system while e.g. doing sports or having some fun with your partner 😉.
If you would want to keep that reading below 20 (Garmin‘s threshold for Rest) at all times, you would have to turn into a couch potato with healthy eating habits 😀.
A couple of days ago I was going to the office. It was Friday, I had some meetings scheduled and some light office tasks to do. All in all, it should be an easy day as it was the first working week of the year.
As I was walking from the car park to the office, I noticed a guy walking in front of me. He was strolling along, with a coffee in his hand and looking kind of dreamy. Unintentionally I set off to overtake him and hurry along my way.
Then it hit me: “Why am I in a hurry?”. As I wrote above, there is no urgent meeting that I needed to attend or a task I had to do. Where did this urge to overtake him and look busy come from?
The modern life being promoted around us, teaches us not to loose time and to always be busy. If we are not, then we will not be successful, reach our goals or we will simply be brand-marked as slackers.
But this time I intentionally chose to stop my overtaking and match the speed of a dreamy looking guy.
This year the company I work in did their bi-annual Employee Survey powered by Gallup.
The company wide numbers came out same or worse then 2 years ago, but my team‘s Employees Engagement Index went up significantly. I was rated very good by the people I lead concerning my leadership skills and they showed way higher engagement values than the rest of the teams in our department.
It‘s start of the year and time of dreaming about big goals we want to achieve this year. I tend to give myself too many, or too ambitious, goals. Then I either drive myself crazy to reach them, or the regular life gets to me and I get a bad feeling in the stomach because of „my failure“.
This year I‘ll just aim for consistency in healthy habits and things that give me joy, e.g. if my goal is regular running then I‘ll aim to go like 3 times a week but do not care about the speed or distance, or I’ll try to go fishing once a week even if it’s just a couple of hours etc.
I often read about people „living“ in their ToDo list, meaning everything that comes to mind, is seen on the net, needs to be done someday (maybe), … gets jotted down in the ToDo list or processed thru their productivity toolchain. The purpose of this is to not forget anything and to live a quantified but relaxed life, because everything is recorded and nothing is forgotten.
Although I can relate to the „nothing gets forgotten“ part, because I need this to ease my mind, having everything I need to do in a day, week, … added to my ToDo list, makes me feel like a machine and I actually feel psychological pressure to „get those tasks done“. I do not like it.
Every once in a while I fall down that rabbit hole and start filling my main.org with everything possible. But then at some point the list gets too long and I start feeling that pressure of still having „so many open tasks“ when the day is done. The only thing that helps then is to radically go thru the list and delete all the junk that is not 100% a real task, that has to get done, or a note which has value and shall be kept.
Brainiac is a minimal, distraction-free Emacs configuration designed for GTD workflows, notes, and task management using Org-mode. This v1.1 update focuses on stability and workflow refinements — keeping the setup lightweight while improving daily use.
If you're new to Brainiac, check out the original introduction to learn about the philosophy behind this configuration.
Everywhere we look, be it blogs, articles, TV, printed media, books ... everyone is talking about increasing productivity, self-improvement, the best health plan we have to try, next gadget that will make our life easier ...
Isn't all of this there just to further fuel the modern capitalist consumerist machine?
Are we setting the wrong goals and priorities in life?
This is it. Final post of the series, as I think the transition is now over.
In this post I will try to recapitulate what I achieved, learned and messed up in the last 48 months.