Sunday, July 27, 2014

Opportunity Costs, First Principles, State of my life

I wrote this in my journal a few days ago.
July 13, 2014
State of my life at this point.
I did really badly in hanabi game yesterday (card game that involves a lot of logic, memory, quick thinking). I made a lot of illogical moves where i didn't think every path through.
I'm worried that that's a sign that I am not very logical, and a further sign that I suck at programming, and maybe being an engineer.
This makes me go back to being worried that I'm not leveraging my forte/strong-points. (Where my current major goal in life is to become an entrepreneur, first through programming and making apps, and programming requires logic.)

After the game night, I then came home, browsed youtube, and saw this super sad romantic anime called 5cm per Second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6sZ8K3Vy0. All that got me thinking about life, failure, and what to do about it. I thought about the following.

Tombstone - Going to First Principles
I remember Elon Musk talking about first principles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI . And I want to boil things down to fundamental truths of my life and life's desires.
What do I want it to say on my tombstone? What do I really want to do in life? My desires. Not necessarily having anything to do with my career.
Do I want it to say Entrepreneur? or more like Father, Husband, Son? But maybe even deeper than that, what is it that I really want? about being an entrepreneur, or father, husband, son?
Entrepreneur:
-Fame?
-Glory?
-Recognition
-the feeling of worth
-money  (money for what? -to experience more experiences)
-helping others? (does that lead to the feeling or worth?)

Father, husband, son, friend:
-Ultimately, I want to love and be loved and be cherished. I think that is what we all want. 
(Do i mainly just want to be loved? and I know that the best way to "get loved", is by loving others?)

So maybe I just want to feel valued, loved, cherished, and relevant. Is that my deepest desire? How do I know if something is my deepest desire? Is the the thing that's motivating everything I do?
Isn't that what all human beings want?
Ok maybe this is too first-principled, and we gotta go back up a level. Because even though all humans might be able to agree that they want to feel valuable, an engineer might define "valuable" as being able create a low-cost, low-energy water-desalination device that solves California's drought, while a father might define "valuable" as being able to take his kids to get ice cream. So maybe having it say "Valuable" on my tombstone is a little to vague and not sufficient. TBD on this trail of thought.


Opportunity costs
Also what i am doing today that i would be doing differently, had i not had ambitions of being an entrepreneur? and not spending a bunch of hours trying to make a website.
-partying more
-not being as stressed out about time
-spending more time with friends
-going to the beach
-getting a masters
-going to bars more
-spending more time on getting a girlfriend and having more sex?
-learning how to cook
-learning how to fix my car?
-investing money in stocks
-creating some e-commerce website?

Even if i don't become an entrepreneur, will i regret the current time spent doing what I'm doing? Not too much... maybe only second to getting a masters, because i still do spend a lot of time with people, and i still don't care as much about learning now to cook.

Love and Romance
This anime called 5cm a Second was amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6sZ8K3Vy0 
The guy kept looking and waiting, for something of the past, for something better than the present, and refusing other girls. Yet the girl moved on and lived her life.
What about me?
After watching this anime, it made me want a relationship, a family, and not those things typically found in bars and clubs. What I gathered from some of the comments I saw from youtube video was that I need to learn how to be happy in the present rather than in the past, or the future. Neither of those are real. Only the present is real.



More on first principles
"Meaning: rather than taking what already exists as the basis of our thinking, we break the problem down to its most fundamental truths and examine each piece. Even though a problem has already been solved, we start from the problem’s most basic elements to reexamine whether a better solution might be possible."

"Most major revolutions that have occurred build on this basic premise. Cars examined the fundamental principles of transportation instead of iterating horse-drawn carriages and smartphones looked at the principles of communication instead of improving dumbphones. "