Reader

#health

Are you chasing happiness in your life, or is it enough to be content? Happiness seems to be an ideal, which could be hard to reach … at least for the perfectionists among us.

What would it mean to live a happy life? Everything would have to be perfect, be it at work or in our private life. We would be in a good mood and positive every minute of our life. Doesn’t seem very likely, unless you are a monk, spiritual guru or similar.

What would it then be to live a content life? We would have to live with our inner critic and keep him under control as far as possible. Seek calm and be positive when it’s possible and accept that nothing we do will ever perfect, that life will throw a lot of hardships our way. As the saying goes „be happy with small things“ and try to accumulate as many of those moments as possible. This will fuel you thru the next phase, where happiness is just a distant thought.

#tech #privacy

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”?

#tech #health

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 😀.

#tech

Because “... each tiny “I don't care” iteration to tech products is a small step closer to Star Trek's promised land of holodecks, abundance, and hot aliens ...“, and I want that future!

#health

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.