Games that make you think about life (and games)

This is a bit of a collection of collections... happened to see these lists  a few years ago and played through quite a number of the games and they've all had quite an impact on my life.

Almost all of them are indie titles, all lovingly crafted to speak about messages that resonate with me even now years after playing them.

thanks grandma...

Hope you enjoy some of these games... I've mentioned my favorites from each list next to each. Each game might only take an hour or so and some of them are maybe 15 minute experiences tops.

1. 20 Games that make you think about life
• Elude: A game about depression, this let's you experience what it might be like to be bipolar and to really feel the hopelessness that can come about when you're on a downswing. Don't worry, the game won't depress you... it'll just show you the sort of shape of the feeling.
• Covetous: A game about coveting, as told by a lone cancer cell... Deeply intriguing game, one that gives me chills even now thinking about it and it's been several years since I've played it.
• Air Pressure: A game that has you interact with your kinda clingy girlfriend... one possible interpretation is that she's a personification of a substance abuse problem, but there's lots of ways to read all the various stories and outcomes.
• Aether: Lovely, relaxing little game, made by the creator of Super Meat Boy, it has you explore planets and try and help the creatures on each one deal with something that's bothering them.
• UTE: Definitely NSFW, this is a game where you play as a nympho woman trying to have sex as much as possible before she's caught and made to marry the guy she was last caught with. Make of that what you will. (RockPaperShotgun did an entire column on this game and it's themes : S.EXE : Ute by Lea Schönfelder)
2. 10 Games that make you think about life
• Loved: Absolutely beautiful, beautiful game exploring the nature of authority and obedience. It plays like a standard platformer but as you play there's a voice directing you to take certain paths, play a certain way and sometimes even jump to your death on some spikes. And as you play you also need to figure out how much your own self-worth really means to you.
• The Company Of Myself: Another platformer, but you play as a solitary man who's reminiscing about his lost love as he tries to move through the world. Very trippy, deep game and very interesting twist ending of sorts. Psychology enthusiasts will really like this one.
• I Can Hold Me Breath Forever: A touching story about friendship and loss. I still have to finish this one but the little I played was really interesting.
3. 10 More Games that make you think about life:
• American Dream: Another kinda NSFW game, this has you work as an investment banker during the week so you can pimp out your house and have crazy drug fueled orgies over the weekend. The parties stop if your house doesn't have the latest stuff though so your investments had better keep giving you the monies. 
• Spent: Think you can survive for a month living at the poverty line? Get a job, keep healthy and try and keep your kids happy for only 30 days and see how things go... 
• One Chance: Oh my god, this game!! No resets, no takebacksies, you literally get only one chance to play to try and save the world when your cure for cancer ends up going awry and killing all living cells. Haven't agonized over any decision in a game as much as in this one...
4. 5 Games that make you think about life: 
• Haven't played very many from this list, but Gray was a really interesting take on the way in which ideas spread, and the nature of being an outsider. You start as the only person who's not rioting when everyone else is going nuts and you're trying to talk to people and convert them all the your way of thinking.
• I want to play Passage and The Game sometime but I've been a little scared thus far. :p
5. 15 games that make you think differently about Games:
• This is a collection of games commissioned by various government or NGO agencies to try and raise awareness or understanding of various issues.
• Elude and Spent are on this list so I'm guessing the rest will probably be pretty stellar... I plan to play and check 'em out soon.

So yea, this list is comparatively quite old and there've been a lot of really good games that've come out since then that explore various interesting themes and perspectives. Maybe I'll make a future post to collect those. 

Also, it's not that I've played all the games on these lists... these are just my favourites out of the ones I've played. Lemme know if there are any other gems buried in there. :)

Songs About Real(er) Love

So a couple of weeks ago I did a guest post for my friends Tanisha and Sudhir's lovely music blog Monday Mephobics and while researching songs I found a bunch of... "alternative" love songs.

Pop music is just waaaay to saturated with a certain kind of drippy, Disney version of love and it can get a little frustrating that most of our lived experiences of it have very little in common. This of course to say nothing of the complexities of marriage or long term relationships or (big scary voice) Child Raising.

So take a listen to these three songs and lemme know what you think. And don't worry, these aren't some misanthropic ballads; just keep an open mind. :)

'Adult female : A Song' by Hank Green

This first one just really struck me right from the opener:

This song is for a girl
No wait, I changed my mind
This song is for an adult female

And from there on just goes on to talk about a more measured, reasonable experience of what love is like. Which seems pretty cool especially in comparison to songs like 'Grenade' (Bruno Mars) which just sound stressful.

'If I Didn't Have You' by Tim Minchin

This song is probably my absolute favourite in this set. I think the notion of "Soulmates", perpetuated by countless hours of all forms of popular media is probably one of the most destructive ideas that have ever happened.

Not destructive with the spectacular visibility of a nuclear bomb perhaps but definitely in a more quiet, insidious kind of way. Think about it, if there were truly only one perfect person out there, then the stakes are unbelievably high! It would justify any sort of shitty behaviour on your part if, say, your soulmate were already in a relationship or a marriage. Even if they had children. Even if they were leaving town to go across the country for a new job. Even if they said they didn't love you back... (let that one sink in for a minute)

On top of that it probably doesn't help marriages because at the first sign of any discomfort you'd be confronted with the thought that it wasn't supposed to be this way if your partner is your soul mate. And that's ridiculous because I shouldn't be the one to tell you that any kind of commitment is arduous and tedious at times, and the idea of finding your soulmate puts such immense pressure on everyone feeling happy all the time.

So for me it was really refreshing to have someone say:

Your love is one in a million
You couldn’t buy it at any price.
But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves,
Statistically, some of them would be equally nice.

Take a listen, the song is the first 5 minutes or so and then he talks about his family and his wife in-case anyone gets butthurt.



Btw, check out We've All Been Raised on Evil Love Stories if you're also a recovering Disney-love-aholic. Also Soulmates by Xkcd's 'What If?' for a more mathematical break-down of why this idea doesn't work.

'I'm Not Edward Cullen' by Hank Green

This one I thought was really cute, and it's another one by Hank Green where:

"...Hank and Katherine Sing about how hard it is to live up to the example of a perfectly beautiful, perpetually-seventeen, bodily-functionless, millionaire vampire (who owns a freaking Aston Martin for crap's sake!)"

All I know is that I felt quite similarly during school when the girls would friggin' go out with dudes from the upper grades. It's like "Bro... not cool!". :p

[Bonus] 'The Science Love Song' by ASAPScience

One more song for all you lovely people. This one doesn't any point or anything, it's just cute and (super) nerdy and is more of a classic love song with a bit of a spin.



That's all from me... lemme know if you've come across any good songs in the comments.

[Update] Extended Honourable Mentions

1. She Called Me Bhaiyya : https://youtu.be/u2-cCLAvMCo
A song about a guy being rakhi-zoned (Indian friend-zoned) by a girl he likes. I don't think the song is specifically taking sides but whether you take it as a personal anthem or a wake-up call or whatever is entirely representative of your personal state IMHO.

 

Less Ambition-Porn, Less Stress

Something is happening in the cultural Zeitgeist at the moment, or maybe I'm only just noticing it, but there seems like everywhere the heat is being turned up and at a faster and faster rate - like a boiling pot with the lid already bouncing off from the bubbles. In the world we inhabit it's not enough that you run faster tomorrow than you did today, your rate of increase of speed (your acceleration) also needs to keep going up.

Of course this is an insane thing to ask people to do indefinitely (because of pesky notions like physics, and logic) and is practically a recipe for creating a stressful situation. To make it more palatable it's instead dressed up as a sort of cultural fetishization of the tireless workholic, desperately working to bring dreams to life. Case in point, check out this advertisement I saw for Ronnie Screwvala's new book "Dream with your Eyes Open".




It could've been marketed in any which way, but notice the refrain that keeps getting repeated: "Don't sleep...". The implication being that sleep is for losers, something for people who've nothing better to do.

Don't sleep / Because the voice in your head won't let you / till you beat your next challenge

Overly obsessive voices in the head leading to persistent insomnia? Sounds more like a clinical condition than something to be encouraged... How could they possibly be actually trying to sell people on accepting increasing levels of stress in their life?!

The problem for me though is that there's some truth to the immortal words of Dr. Kelso when he said...

Nothing in this world that's worth having comes easy

(Side Note: That's from Scrubs Season4 Episode20 "My Boss's Free Haircut" by the way, great episode)

The problem is that for any endeavour that's even minutely creative or outside the "normal" scope of things there's an element of risk which means that there's bound to be an element of stress. Forget the distinction between Eustress (Good Stress) vs Distress (Bad Stress) for the moment, I'm talking about all the stories of entrepreneurs who've invariably faced a moment of just absolute, crushing despair when it looks like things aren't going to work out. Even SpaceX and Tesla Motors that are thought of today as inevitable success stories had moments when they almost went bankrupt.

The key thing then is to anticipate that creative endeavours are basically an emotional rollercoaster and the higher the stakes, the faster you'll go from the higher highs to the lowest lows.

The graphic above is taken from "Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic Depression" and hopefully an understanding of the effects of each stage will help you plan for it better.

All of this is much more complex and nuanced that this rosy, romanticized picture the media gives you of the creative mission. A martydom built around enough "not sleeping" does not automatically buy you success, it's just a prescription for devolving into a steaming hot mess.

You're so stressed out you forget to eat; you have no appetite, you're skipping meals... Just ask yourself: 'am I taking care of myself?'

If you continue to work and work incessantly because you've been convinced that this deadline is desperately important then you necessarily let other stuff drop and soon you're up to your neck in laundry and you're just drained and unable to do even the work that was once fun for you. That sucks, that state is to be avoided if at all possible and it's referred to as 'Ego Depletion'.

Of course, this is all fairly common sense stuff. And if the culture perpetuates workaholism then there will also naturally emerge something to soothe those aches. And this is where things get really sinister for me, because there's this advertisement on TV right now for some "Weekend Binge Time" on StarWorld.

This particular ad just bugs me on so many levels, but we'll just look at a couple of the themes that struck me. Here's most of the script, intercut with commentary:

Meet me, Binge Baba
Don't seek, don't search, just relax... On your sofa.

Binge Baba introduces himself, and innocuously invites you to just relax on your sofa to take a well deserved break. Remember that if you've been slogging through the week it most likely wasn't on something creative or rewarding for yourself, you were just struggling to keep afloat as your boss piles more and more on top of you as his boss shovels more crap onto him!

So on the weekends when you finally get some time to yourself, your TV whispers, "Don't seek, don't search, don't bother looking for a better situation; that kind of thinking is disruptive... also isn't this couch just so much more comfortable! Relax, you've earned it!"

The real question is not whether life exists after death,
It is how you spend your weekends when you're alive.

To me this is about as dark and insidious as it gets. Don't worry about death, don't worry about whether your life has meaning? Also notice that he doesn't say you should spend your "Time" well, you are encouraged to spend your "Weekends" well. That subtle omission means that it's assumed that your Weekdays are already spoken for, like it's the most obvious thing that five out of seven days are pre-destined to be spent in a cubicle.

So get comfortable and watch your favorite shows, All At Once.

And there it is. The great tragedy of it all is that all this incessant prodding to work harder produces a mass of people who're just too tired for anything. But even in that exhaustion, the genius of capitalism finds a way to squeeze some profit out of them as well by plopping them in front of a screen and feeding them more ads.

Society could be exhausting people by encouraging them to step out of their creative comfort zones more often but as we know, such steps are necessarily painful experiences. The fear of rejection especially is probably one of the most pervasive feelings across anyone I've ever met. So of course, unconsciously and collectively, we attempt to protect one another from these feelings by bringing each other to paths that are considered "safe". Typically this has us encouraging each other in steady, salaried jobs even though we individually might feel that something may be missing... and the wheels just keep on turning.

Bleak as this all sounds though, I think there's still hope yet and personally I think it starts with rejecting the notion that "Happiness" is something worthwhile. Or atleast, that pursuing Happyness for it's own sake is the ultimate objective. For one thing, achieving a state of happiness by actively chasing it might not even be possible because of the way our biology works à la the Hedonistic Treadmill. The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that it leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by institutions that would place the proverbial carrot always just beyond reach.

Moreover, and this is where it's really interesting, maybe what we really want is not happiness but (paradoxically) to lose ourselves in something (anything) that completely captivates our attention.

When you are caught in a creative endevour... happiness doesn't enter it; you are ready to suffer! ~Slavoj Žižek

Supposedly there were scientists in the time of of the discovery of radiation who considered the possibility that there was something dangerous about the work they were doing and continued regardless. Of course, Marie Curie eventually succumbed to Radium poisoning but her life and her legacy resonate even to this day.

It might be impudent to say, but the ultimate question might really be:

"What would I do, if money were no concern?".

This flies right in the face of conventional wisdom that teaches us to both fear poverty and crave affluence but maybe just clear away the concern with materialism for a moment and find whatever it is that really drives you. Just as you cannot command a flower to bloom or insist that a person love you, a job that doesn't align internally can be one of the most cruel punishments we inflict on ourselves.

So search for your Radium, and do what you have to till then... and in the meantime try and take care of yourself so that when the time comes and you need to stay up for three days straight your body and mind are strong enough to carry you.

As for me, I'm going to go to bed once I finish putting this up. Good night.

Also f*@# Binge Baba!

Design Or Be Designed

There are three ideas I want to leave you with in this piece...

1. Firstly, everyone is a designer and is constantly designing whether they're aware of it or not.
2. We are designed by the things which we have designed; the things we create turn around and return the favour.
3. Lastly, design apply not only to "things" but also (perhaps more importantly) to ideas.

To start with...

Everyone is always designing!

At it's core, "Design" is just a process of making aesthetic and functional choices. Yes some people go on to specialize, and we call them Designers, but the principles they employ are available to everyone; All you have to do is be sensitive to the way different kinds of people interact with things. Moreover even if someone else has designed your phone (for example), the fact that you ultimately chose to buy it is also a kind of design decision.

In other words, design isn't just about creating products but about shaping your lived experience of the world around you. Even the choice between using one chair or another represents all the possible interactions you might have with one; a chair for work will be very different from one to play video games from.

If nothing else you're designing the parameters of your own life, which you then get to live. What I think this means is that we need to be more aware of the way in which design affects not only us, but the people around us as well.

Being designed by our designs

"Just as you grow into the world, the world grows into you. Not only do you occupy a certain place, but that place in turn occupies you..." - Costica Bradatan [1]

There are innumerable examples of how the things we create end up then changing how we act. Storing people's birthdays in a calendar means you stop needing to remember them. Having a camera built into your phone means you take more pictures. And who can say they don't have atleast one friend who's woken up at 4 AM to water their Farmville crops.

It also goes much much further than that into our architecture and the spaces we design: you become quiet when you enter a religious space and you become louder when you enter a pub; the language you learn as a child ends up shaping your personality, which then continues to reinforce itself as you continue to read and speak. Our tools literally change the way we think about the world which then lead us to create new tools to facilitate that new understanding. We're perpetually in this dance with our creations, around and around forever.

In a way this makes sense because of the way our brains are made. Our brains are probably the most remarkable aspects of our species anyway and one of it's main features is it's Neuroplasticity - basically our brain can rewire itself to remap the environment as it changes. As much as we like to think we're masters of our surroundings, the truth is that we're inseparably connected to the universe and our brains respond as such. 

The key is to recognize that this is happening all the time and be aware of it. If the things we surround ourselves with ultimately end-up shaping who we are then that's a huge motivation to be more conscious of the design decisions we make everyday. There's an entire design philosophy built around this idea and it's called Ontological Design [2] and it will probably become a guiding framework for a whole generation of designers.

What this also introduces is the idea that we can change ourselves by manipulating our surroundings and our tools. If you want to end a habit, change your environment to make it a little harder to do. If you want to be more productive, try getting a standing desk if you think it will help. The possibilities are endless, and with a little bit of introspection there's so many things to experiment with to try and level-up as human beings.

Ideas can be designed too.

We've discussed the effect that design has on us as individuals and the people around us. But in a way, design affects those who come after as well and thinking about future generations is where things get really trippy.

All things have a life-cycle where they are created, mature into prominence and then fade into obscurity. What's amazing is that our ability to create things that different time scales from the ones we occupy. To create a meal is to build something that will last for a few moments. Things like cars or planes or phones live over a few years. Buildings and architecture maintain relevance over a few generations.

Among the things that last the longest though, perhaps our most robust creations are our Ideas. Ideas can survive vast stretches of time, even going beyond their original intent and usefulness and morphing to adapt to the times. But most definitively they have a life-cycle as well. Think about how our notions of the traditional education system are being shaken by the introduction of online education. Think of how traditional models of marriage and family are being challenged by the recognition of the rights of gay people. And on and on, Ideas constantly rise and fall as they battle for our attention.

More long term then, how do our Ideas shape us and what can we do about it? Taking the Education example again, does it make sense that we batch people by their dates of birth and put them through school; is the most important measure of a human really its "production date"? One would think schools were factories that took in children and manufactured employees.

Or take Capitalism, arguably the most all-encompassing Idea we live with. Almost all of economic theory is founded on the notion of people being Rational actors, who act to maximize their self-interest i.e. who are selfish and self-serving. Is it any surprise then to find that the system rewards those who are selfish and self-serving? Several studies show that there are a higher than average number of psychopaths present amongst the CEOs of companies (1 in 25, according to one study). The ideas we create constantly act back on us - casting people into selfish moulds means that over time that's the sort of human being that gets preferentially produced.

Think of the way we think about Sex Education as another example. Traditionally we think that the "right" way to teach children about sex is to emphasize that it's about love and sacrifice. But might that encourage children to not think of themselves when making a choice about whether to engage in sexual activity? After all, sex has been presented as something sacrificial all along. An excellent exploration of this topic can be found here - Because it feels good : Talking to kids about sex. 

There are so many examples of this but the scary thing is that we aren't really aware of how fluid things really are; societal norms are presented to us as being these unshakable traditions. And it makes sense in a way because the people who run the show are pretty much aware of how the game works. In a very real way, our lifestyles have been designed for us from the time we enter school till we exit the Rat Race and retire. If we are to regain any sense of agency we must first realize that we have immeasurably more power than we are led to believe.

Closing thoughts

The problem is that it can all get a little overwhelming, especially the sheer "vertigo of freedom" that presents itself if you choose to go down the rabbit hole. To that I say that changing reality is really the simplest thing because you need only worry about yourself. Ultimately it is our linguistic and thought choices that decisively shape our realities!

Even the Bible says (John 1:1) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the beginning was the word - in the beginning was Information. Imagine God having a thought, speaking a word and then watching everything come into being.

And Science bears this reality out as well. We think of Life as being something magical but really even the Human Body is a collection of things that are kind of not really alive. It's ultimately just a collection of proteins and chemical reactions that are all just following chemical and psychical laws. But then at the heart of all that non-life is DNA; it's essentially code, it's software that then proceeds to create it's own hardware. Check out The World is made of Language for more on this, or watch the video below.

What this means then is that the act of changing something is quite simply just an honest, whole-hearted choice. We could change our realities in an instant if we really wanted to, it would unfold on it's own pretty much just by the fact that you're still alive and breathing.

 

Further Reading and References

• [1] Shots of Awe - What is ontological design : http://youtu.be/aigR2UU4R20
• [2] http://www.academia.edu/888457/Ontological_designing 
• Shots of Awe - How our creations change us : http://youtu.be/hHCo9U4jxzE
• http://hauntedgeographies.typepad.com/hauntedgeographies/2010/12/ontological-design.html
• https://mehulsangham.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/ontological-design-part-1-cognitive-plasticity

What Women Really Want

As a member of the male variant of our species, I can safely say that after a certain age there's a certain question that comes to haunt most (if not all) of us:

"What do women want?"

It's an innocuous enough little question but it's frustrating enough that the '?' eventually becomes more of a '!' over time. After a while though, the question becomes so bewildering that it starts to become a little ridiculous. The structure of the question itself is a little broken and the cracks reveal the heart of what we've imbibed since we were boys.

Mainly it comes down to the sentiment expressed by the title of "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus." Screw that stupid book by the way; possibly no other phrase shuts down conversations about gender dynamics as quickly as that f&!@#ng title! And it's not always clear that they've read the book either, it's often just a stand-in for "...but you just don't get it!".

My problem with that sentiment is that it paints Women (with a capital 'W') as this separate species that have different motivations from us Martians Men. Worse still, this perpetuates the image of women as social masterminds who hold hapless men in their sway using the power of their magical lady bits. In a way it casts Women as having a specific Agenda and if we could only decipher it then all would be blissful.

Btw, if these women were having secret meetings to decide the Agenda, I'd like to think Helen Mirren would chair them. :D

Seriously though, the more I think about it the more it seems like the big secret about what women want is that they don't really have much clue! And I mean that inasmuch as basically no-one (man or woman) has any clue. I might even go so far as to say that if you took a man's "soul" (however you imagine it) and put it in a woman's body, he/she/it would eventually be behaviourally indistinguishable from the average woman.

I know a lot of women are probably rolling their eyes at me right now but I think this stuff bears being said. It's one thing to just intellectually know something and quite another for it to actually be a meaningful meme in society. In the 'nature' vs 'nurture' argument, claiming that "women are from Venus" completely denies the possibility that there's any role that society plays in shaping the way women behave on a day to day basis.

Another big issue I have is that these myths are perpetuated and then capitalized on to get us to buy crap to try and barter our way into women's pants hearts. Chief among these insults to reason is the multi-billion dollar diamond industry. I'd rather not go into all of it but suffice it to say that the evidence shows that diamonds (of any shape, size, cut, clarity or heritage) are literally worthless. You could read further here : Diamonds are Bullshit, or you could watch the video below.



So yes, this is my big epiphany for you this Valentine's day. Should make a great topic for awkward conversation if you're on a first date tomorrow. ;)

And if you prefer your revelations in pithy one-liner form, well:

Women are just like men... plus the magic bits.

Imagine that on a t-shirt; Dare I say it, we could change the world!

Writing Resolutions is SO last year

Every year is kind of the same story for me regarding New Year's Resolutions. They get ignored just as easily as they get made and worse, resolution lists start converging to the same three or four staples: Eat healthier, exercise more, be more productive, yadda yadda yadda...

I think we all spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that we've failed at these lists and wondering what our problem is. We also spend a lot of time promising ourselves that "...this year will be different". All I know is that last year I received a video titled "How To Unleash Your Greatness in 2014" that I'm still getting around to watching.

After years of trying to "Be more motivated" with my resolutions, I've started to wonder about the practise itself; Maybe it's not all it's hyped up to be in terms of actually helping us grow as human beings.

Towards the end of 2014 though, I believe I've come across something that might be a bit more productive. But before I get to that, I'd like to talk about Browser Tabs for a minute.

Open tabs are the bane of my existence

At any given point, I might have anywhere from nine to thirty browser tabs open while I'm on my laptop. Also, if you use Firefox, you might be familiar with a function that shows you your previous pages if your browser crashes. What you might not know is that the feature itself allows nesting as well so at one point I probably had close to a hundred tabs open!

In addition to this being generally insane, what you might not get is that tabs are my own special kind of hell. In a way, each one represents some kind of unfinished business; Whether it's an opinion piece or buzzfeed list, the possibility exists that it could lead to something profound or useful. But this also means that now each tab is something that can't be lost lest all that potential greatness be un-unleashed (Leashed?).

And then one day... one fateful day... they were all gone! The restore function dropped every single one of almost a HUNDRED tabs!

Picking up the pieces

Now this kind of thing has happened before but never to this extent. I was absolutely mortified and even went through the five stages of grief:

• Denial
• "There must be some way to recover them, they must be stored somewhere"
• Anger
• "Stupid Firefox, can't even store some freaking tabs"
• Bargaining
• "I swear I won't let so many tabs accumulate next time..."
• Depression
• "Myyy taaabbbss... Whaaiii!"
• Acceptance
• Here's where things got interesting...

For one thing, I realized that nothing really important had been forgotten (and how would I have known even if it did). Additionally, one of the comments put me on to this Browser extension called OneTab which converts all your open tabs into a list and keeps them from getting lost. (Never Again!)

Weirdly though, I initially thought OneTab would just be a more robust version of the Firefox restore function but oddly enough, my productivity started to go waay up after just a few days!

Over the next few weeks, I've come to believe that OneTab offers a completely different way to think about dealing with "Resets" (of which New Year's day is probably the most significant).

Embracing a Fresh Start

While New Years and Birthdays are common resets we don't recognize the amount of people that have to deal with a forced reset like a natural disaster or some other tragedy.

I think the trick is to take lessons from the Forced resets and use them to enrich the naturally occurring resets. My experience with my browser crashing might have completely eliminated my backlog but I wasn't too happy about it. Where OneTab comes in is by dealing with everything super quickly, but in a way that still feels like everything is handled. If I ever need to work, I can just get to it without the open tabs eating at my (very) limited mindspace.

What I've been thinking about for a while now is how to extend the scope of the OneTab approach.  It's a common experience to be unable to focus on any one thing because of all the other stuff crowding in your mind. If there was a way to tangibly clear things away and make a little space, that could potentially be very empowering in a way that writing Resolutions simply don't provide.

OneLife

Dare I say it, you only live once. And it's too tragic to constantly be thrashing just to keep from drowning.

More radical (and braver) people than I talk about something called declaring Task Bankruptcy or ToDo Bankruptcy. Basically the steps are:

1. File everything under 'Pending'.
2. Setup some kind of system to handle new tasks.
3. Follow it in a way that doesn't let you get overwhelmed again, and
4. Make a dent in the 'Pending' folder whenever possible.

If you're able to make do with just that then great, but I've been going years without any kind of cleanup so this sort of radical cleanse is a little intimidating. For me, I'd like to expand on the first step a little more.

To-Do : Wipe the Slate Clean

This is a list of some things I currently think would be a full reset of my life right now. Lemme know if any other items come to you:

1. First off, slow down you crazy child. You're no use to anyone if you're stressed out.
• Accept that your productivity is going to dip in the short term while this list gets done. 
• See if you can give yourself the time you need, or else get it done in the time you have.
2. Get every idea and pending project out of your head and written down somewhere.
• Personally I highly recommend using Evernote in combination with the GTD system.
• Btw, sign up here if you don't have Evernote yet pretty please? Evernote Referral.
3. Save all passwords somewhere safe and password-protected.
• (I'm still looking for a trustworthy solution, let me know if you find something useful)
4. Setup Gmail Inactive Account Manager so you can designate nominees for your mail account.
• This is super important because your email account is a pretty important part of your Estate.
• If you're incapacitated for any reason it should be available for someone to handle.
• I know it's a morbid thought but yea, it's just one of those things.
5. Get a Last Will & Testament made.
• Apparently as soon as you get your first job you should get a will made up.
6. Make sure that the master passwords are included wherever someone will find them.

Once these things are done, enjoy the peace of mind it brings you for as long as possible. That feeling of open space might trigger some new ideas of their own, but those should be filed back right away into step 2; now's not the time to dive back in.

Rinse-n-Repeat step 2 until you're completely dry of pending tasks and half-formed ideas and mostly everything is written down. The mind is made for thinking, it isn't so great at the storage and retrieval bit.

Some thoughts on getting back into the groove

After putting in all this effort to extricate yourself from your commitments, it'd be madness to find yourself right back in the thick of things. Unfortunately old habits die hard and your brain was rather comfortable with the way things were till you decided to shake things up.

This is the crucial point, you will need some kind of strategy to deal with the new things that are bound to come up. The easiest thing would be to handle new tasks as they arrive or dip into your archives to search for the really important stuff.

One key thing to keep in mind is that "How" you work is not nearly as crucial as "What" you choose to work on.

• Choose your tasks for maximum impact, 
• Don't let the urgent crowd out the important, and
• Remember to have fun with it.

Eventually though, once you've gotten a sense of your priorities, a good system can help improve efficiency. One system I would recommend is the "Agile Results" system - Getting Started with Agile Results.

• For the next day, week, month, year (whatever timescales you want to use), pick three things you want to accomplish.
• Every Monday sit and review your tasks for the week, and 
• Every Friday review your learning from the week.

And if there's one thing I would impose onto your daily schedule, make a little time everyday for meditation. Your mind needs time to de-stress just as much as your body does and sadly, getting drunk doesn't count.

Please don't burn out.

Imagine for a moment that you're put in charge of about ten people temporarily and you really don't like these chaps, they're just horrible to work with. Let's say you decide to mess with them - how would you go about breaking their spirits? Personally, I think the most effective way would be to just relentlessly pile on with near-impossible deadlines, all the while raising expectations by showering them with praise. It'd only be a matter of time till they cracked and broke down crying.

If you think that's f**ked up, then what about the fact that most of us are exactly as cruel on a yearly basis... except that the mistreated employees here are the various bits of you that work to keep you healthy.

Loyal to a Fault

Sometimes I imagine my body like a dangerously loyal friend.

• Need to stay awake all night to study for that exam tomorrow? No problem!
• He's hungry and needs a sandwich but you just can't drag yourself away from your laptop? That's okay, he'll wait.
• You're both really drunk but you need to ride home safely? No worries, he'll take responsibility; he's just always so confident!

But despite this weird selflessness, it's almost become fashionable nowadays to be mean to our bodies; think of the number of workaholics who wear sleep deprivation like a badge of honour! "I'm working so hard, look at me!"

Of course the problem is that nothing comes free. Sure, you can survive with only 5 hours of sleep a night, but you'll be measurably dumber the next day. Technically you could survive without exercise but you'll become progressively unhealthier and more susceptible to mental and physical illness. What we've lost sight of is the difference between mere surviving and actually thriving! Everyone seems to be walking around in this constant mental fog, with all those little aches and pains everywhere and we think it's normal when that's not how it's supposed to be! If you need proof, you find me a healthy child who needs to warm up for 20 minutes before playing for fear of pulling his hamstring.

The straw that broke the camel's back

But then, what happens if you end up pushing too far? In a way, the immense adaptability of the body is also it's biggest weakness. The body doesn't complain proportional to the amount of stress it's taking on. Which is kind of stupid also; if it was a proportional reaction then most of us would make lifestyle corrections waaaayy sooner than we usually do.

So what happens is that your body endures and endures and endures (with the situation deteriorating all the while) until something small finally tips the scale. It's around this stage that you get people in their 30's with heart attacks and the like. For example, cancerous cells occur naturally even in healthy people but are kept from flourishing if the immune system is functioning well. There's already a strong link established between lifestyle factors and cancer, maybe someday we'll be able to prevent cancer altogether with proper lifestyle adjustments.

Recalibrating

So what can we do? How are we to reclaim a higher standard of existence where we actually start to flourish! Personally, I think that it might be a good strategy to just start with the basic, simple joys of life... get enough sleep, eat decently (whatever that means to you) and see what happens.

Also, and this is something I struggle with, but find a way to start at soon as possible without worrying about doing it perfectly.

Eventually just start some kind of movement / mindfulness practice - something like yoga that flexes both your body and mind. If you really really want to get into it you can also look into something called the "Quantified Self" movement, which might herald the next stage of human evolution; but that's a subject for another post.

Really though it's just shocking how much of a difference the little things make, like getting a decent amount of sleep; it'd be nice to finally actually wake up for once.