Rohan Mitchell | thoughts on technology, productivity and happiness

In my last post, I wrote about how I’d like to help people go after their dreams. I’ve done a bit of thinking and come up with some ideas for how to make this a reality.

Essentially, I’d like to work with people to help them figure out their dreams and get moving towards them. In particular, I’d like to help people with their dreams related to personal growth and contribution. There are heaps of things you can do in these areas, such as finding more meaning and enjoyment in your study or work, improving your physical condition and energy levels, developing new skills, becoming more relaxed and peaceful, expressing your creativity, or just finding a way to help out a friend in need.

To start with, I’d like to work online, using email and online chat. The process I’d like to use is to work with you on developing your vision and motivation, create a plan together, then help you follow the plan and overcome any obstacles on the way.

I’ve been studying personal development for a year or two now, but I’m only just moving into this field, so I’d like to ask for some help getting started. I’m looking for some volunteers who would like some help with a dream, and who don’t mind my inexperience. I’m not charging anything for this. Right now I’d just like to grow my experience and my skills. Eventually I’d like to turn this into a career, but I’ll take it one step at a time.

So, please let me know if you, or anyone you know would like to give me a go. You can reach me at: rohan AT rohanmitchell DOT com. Thanks for reading, and hope to hear from you soon!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my life purpose recently, and I’ve made a lot of progress over the last few days. Tonight I sat down to do a bit more thinking. I typed “What’s the essence of my purpose?” and hit Ctrl-v to paste it in. I obviously hadn’t copied the text I expected, because I got “Order books from amazon in ‘to buy’ list”. I hope the universe is laughing with me and not at me :p

I’ve been thinking that I deeply enjoy having a vision and going after it in a really courageous and passionate way. A prime example that springs to mind was the time I tried polyphasic sleep for 3 weeks, a few years back. It was a real challenge for my self-discipline, but I had so much enthusiasm for the idea that I enjoyed it on a deeper level, even as I struggled to make it to the next nap in the early mornings.

I also love hearing other people talk about their dreams, especially if they’re a bit off the beaten track. I love seeing them come alive when they talk about them. Too often though, I don’t see much more than that, so I’d like to get more involved and help people go after their dreams and achieve them.

So that’s what’s on my mind at the moment. I’m hoping to do some more thinking and planning first, and eventually move my life in this direction.

Where do you want to go in life? I’m curious, so let me know in the comments

Update: I’ve written about the process I used on the Steve Pavlina forums.

Here’s the pictures to accompany my previous post on reverse coiling:

The first loop. To make this loop, my right hand is twisting the cable anticlockwise.

Making the second loop. This time my right hand is twisting the cable clockwise, the opposite direction to the first loop.

Another view of how to make the second loop.

And it’s done! If your cable is longer than mine, just keep alternating between clockwise and anticlockwise loops. When the cable is uncoiled, the twists will cancel out and the cable will sit flat.

Last week I started work at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, working in the web applications group (ie. lots of PHP coding). I’m enjoying the work, but didn’t realise how little time I’d have in the evenings (especially with Aikido 3 nights a week). I’d love to be able to be paid based on my output, not on the number of hours I’ve spent at work, since that’d give me a “finish your work and you can go home early” incentive. Has anyone heard of that happening within the Australian Public Service? I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot

Back in the day (am I old enough to say that?) I used to do light and sound work at high school and a few of my friend’s church events. This basically involved setting up and running the lights and sound equipment for events from the mundane (school assemblies) to the spectacular (a massive party in Rod Laver Arena).

Apart from the odd wireless mic, every device out there is going to need at least one cable. For a decent set up, that adds up to a lot of mic cables, speaker cables, power cables (regular and 3-phase), data cables, and so on. As a newbie, one of my first experiences of reverse coiling was being let loose on a tangled mess of cables at the end of a night, and spending a good half-hour coiling them up. BUT, there’s a trick involved:

If you take a cable and coil it up the regular way, then uncoil it by throwing it across the room, you end up with cable that still has a twist in it, which will kink up and generally be annoying. There’s an elegant technique that lets you avoid this, known as reverse coiling… which I’ll describe shortly, once I’ve fixed image upload on wordpress. Stay tuned!

Update: Reverse coiling illustrated

“I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think this quote highlights a very important point. It’s easy to say simplicity is great, and it’s easy to create something simple. But to make something simple and valuable first requires you to examine the breadth and depth of the subject in all its detail before you can identify the simple solution that covers all the bases that matter. If you’re making something simple, how much complexity did you deal with before you focused in on your simple solution?

This week I’m in Sydney at the Aiki-kai winter school. I’m also testing out the pre-publish feature of wordpress, so with luck this post will appear on Thursday, even though I’m writing it on Sunday. I’m not going to write much not because I have to pack, but if you’re interested, check out the wikipedia page for more information on Aikido, and Aiki-kai Australia for information about dojo locations and the like.

Report on ACS Young IT conference in Adelaide - Day 1, 30th May

Preparing For a Leadership Role by Stephen Kowal

A definition: Motivating (inspiring) a person or people to achieve a goal, while helping those people achieve their goals.

Every position is a leadership position, but not every person is a leader. You can choose whether to lead within your role.

Understand your values and other people’s values, then you’ll know what is needed to inspire yourself and them.

Your performance, not your role is what determines your success. Do whatever you’re doing now with passion, even if you don’t like it.

Luck doesn’t exist - instead, there are always causes for something happening.

Questions: Stephen gave $50 (!) to the person who asked the first question, but only $2 to the person who asked the second question, because “being second isn’t nearly as valuable as being first”.

Whenever I need to sort a list of items, I now find myself using quicksort. I most frequently use it when prioritising my goals. Quicksort provides a fast and methodical way to sort lists of things, and it’s normally used internally by computers, but that doesn’t stop you from using it yourself, manually. In case you haven’t encountered the algorithm before, I’ll walk through how to use it. All of this can be done in your favourite text editor or note taking tool.

0) Start with a list of items you want to sort. In this example, I’ll use a few of my goals for this week:

The SLCD site has easy-to-use instructions for adding content
I have a time booked for my first toastmasters speech
I’m getting the hang of cooking the curried udon noodle stir-fry
My LinkedIn resume is freshly updated with my recent changes
Some fresh updates for TTD are online

1) Select and highlight an element that you think should be approximately in the middle in the list. This is called the “pivot” element.

The SLCD site has easy-to-use instructions for adding content
I have a time booked for my first toastmasters speech
I’m getting the hang of cooking the curried udon noodle stir-fry
—– My LinkedIn resume is freshly updated with my recent changes
Some fresh updates for TTD are online

2) Compare every item on the list to the pivot element, and move them either above or below it.

The SLCD site has easy-to-use instructions for adding content
I have a time booked for my first toastmasters speech
Some fresh updates for TTD are online
—– My LinkedIn resume is freshly updated with my recent changes
I’m getting the hang of cooking the curried udon noodle stir-fry

3) Repeat the process from step 1 for the items above, and then the items below the pivot.

The SLCD site has easy-to-use instructions for adding content
Some fresh updates for TTD are online
— I have a time booked for my first toastmasters speech
—– My LinkedIn resume is freshly updated with my recent changes
I’m getting the hang of cooking the curried udon noodle stir-fry

4) When sorting larger lists, you’ll need to keep going, subdividing the list above and below the pivot, until all the items are sorted.

Try it out! It’s quick and easy once you’ve got the hang of it, and you’ll gain nerd bragging rights (if you choose to publicise your achievement)!

I use a LiveJournal account as a private journal, and so all my posts are private. As far as I’ve been able to tell so far, LiveJournal always defaults to public when posting a new entry.

After getting a bit annoyed, I realised GreaseMonkey would be the perfect tool to fix the UI for myself. So, I wrote a quick script to set the privacy selector to “Private” on the post page. And so, I present possibly the shortest GreaseMonkey script ever. Enjoy!

privatejournal.user.js