Crossing to the Other Side

Last week was spent on the new project I am managing which is migrating to critical systems to a new way of transmission. No one in the head office in Europe is available despite the fact that these applications are managed overseas. Not a major endeavor but the applications are critical enough to need serious attention. I am working with a young Indian specialist who is overweight but is hardworking and open to my suggestions.

My mental health is much better and I have been sleeping more based on the statistics for the month. My move to my new role has made me do less as I turn over my work to a new guy who seems much older than me or perhaps slightly younger. He has a family with grown children lives at a lake nearby and owns a boat. Clearly, this position requires someone who is experienced. and able to handle stress. He underwent a good orientation with the squad going through workshops to change their way of working.

I do not see my departure as a failure as I did not receive the same level of training and support from the management team. They have acknowledged that I was not given the right preparation for my new role. In fact, I applied for a different post which changed mid-stream without my knowing of the change. Also, new people have been added without proper planning. The situation was a mess and I was caught in the middle trying to do everything and make things work.

I have transitioned to my new role and behaved in a manner that is helpful to both the squad and the new person. I have decided to take the high road, not to be resentful and embittered but to move on. I am stuck on some other projects with my old way of thinking. Clearly, the game has changed beneath my feet and I did the right thing to withdraw from the field of battle and chart a new way forward. I was listening to a book about what to do when one is stuck to accepting one situation and moving on.

I decided to focus on AI and devote my energies toward this new field. There is great promise with all that I have heard, read, and seen. This is a new beginning for me, a way to start afresh and devote attention, effort, and time to pivot to this new way of working. This path will be my salvation and perhaps help me achieve my goal of finally being a novelist.

At Riverside

Last Saturday I was at Riverside Arts District in Asheville North Carolina, enjoying an afternoon beside the French Broad River, in lawn chairs watching the river flow before me with people rafting by in rubber tubes. The weather was excellent with a simmering blue sky and lazy clouds drifting by. We sat below tall trees and talked about many things with my cousins who I hadn't seen for some time. He and his wife live in Alberta, Canada, and are on vacation, staying in a condo in the Smoky Mountains. 

Before meeting my cousins, I went to the Art Museum which had only a few exhibits, and was disappointed at the price charge which was too much for a few exhibits but the art lifted me as most art museums do and the rooftop views of the surrounding city and hills compensated a little. We walked the main street outside the museum with the interesting restaurants across the street. There were a lot of people as we drove around the city before heading to the river and there was the vibe of a young and off-beat city with young people about and quirky places to go.

We ate at Smoky Park, a restaurant near the river's edge that served funky sandwiches. I had a beer and we walked out to the edge and sat on the chairs to see the river flow by. The beautiful day was a good break from the hectic week and I was glad to leave the city and go the the mountains. When my cousins arrived and after a time sitting and talking, we walked to a nearby beer house and bought a burger and fries. Ashville is famous for its craft beers but I did not feel like drinking as I would be driving back.

The next day, Sunday, we went on our usual bike ride on the swamp rabbit trail. There were fewer people in the park on Sundays as compared to Saturdays. The next day was Labor Day and I went to the gym to walk on the treadmill and go the poll and swim. In the past, I used to go to the gym on the weekend just to swim but I felt better after my workout if I used the treadmill first to exercise my legs before going for my swim. Going out to the countryside and having a regular exercise regime is important to maintain your sanity in the stressful world. 

Inside the Bubble

Last week I wallowed in semi-self-pity and paranoia though fought back with deliberate mindfulness by not paying attention or having these thoughts without judgment to realize their silliness.  Daily meditation allows one to be in the moment but the mind ceaselessly churns out thoughts but now with less consequence and control. A meditative mind that is mindful of its thoughts needs a tool to be aware of the demands of work, the next steps of a project, reply to an email, need to schedule meetings, and whatnot. A calm mind is a solution to burnout and overwork but may not be the best mind in a busy workplace where the need for action is paramount.

However, there are great business leaders like Ray Dalio the late Steve Jobs, and other who benefits from meditation and mindfulness. The secret is to Build a Second Brain (BASB) - a tool for knowledge management that makes one efficient by having more bandwidth in the brain by moving out mental data into an external location using tools like OneNote, Notion, Obsidian, and EverNote. This is really more on managing your mind not only with meditation but in the way one thinks, and building systems like BASB and knowledge management.

The key is a strong note-taking habit and a process to distill and categorize these notes into a system can can be organized and easily retrieved when the need arises. This requires one to be less emotional which is my main challenge. Often thoughts brought out by events bring out anxiety and fear with misattributed or incorrect reasonings and misguided course of actions. Meditation allows one to control and mind and one's emotions which scales back the thinking process in a way that one is not used to if one like me is driven by thoughts, action plans, strategies, and so on.

Instead, a calm unassuming mind that is temperate removes the constant churning of thoughts and actions and externalizes them into outside systems of knowledge - a second brain that allows one to be active in the moment but content that another tool is behind one's well-being. Otherwise, one remains inside the bubble forever driven by a monkey mind without the benefit of mental rigor and calm deliberation. Get out of the bubble which is not only achieved by meditation and BASB but also by journaling and practicing CBT or cognitive behavior therapy.