Re Human Day 53

Re-inventing ourselves has always been the most important skill. I’m re-inventing myself by improving in 15 areas at a time. This post is part of my Re Human project.

Daily Habits

Books: I’ve been listening to Platform Revolution. At the beginning I thought things were too obvious but then they started introducing some terminology that I actually find / think will find useful — because it’s introducing new symbols with I can use to think of things in new ways. (and right now symbols related to platforms would be very useful because the startup I’m building is a platform). Some notes from today:

A platform enables an open participatory structure to exchange and create value between participants.

There are positive and negative network effects. Also same side and crossover network effects. These create a quadrant of four types of network effects.

A platform’s goal is to facilitate the exchange of information, of goods and services, or currency.

Participants + Value unit + Filter = Core Interaction

Effective platform designs do:

Pull, Facilitate, and Match.

Effectively.

Meditation: 21 minutes in the morning.

Re Human Extended Activity: I did Graphic Design today.

A friend told me that the reason he enjoys reading these daily posts is because I’m creating a window through which he can see my thought process.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is “what are we optimizing for?”. I think this is an extremely important question to ask about ourselves and our world. My current answer is “understanding”. I think Understanding brings many things. And if you tie it to anything, like “enjoy” or “love” or “create”, or “X”, you can create a very powerful flywheel.

Like “understand to create to understand to create to understand … -> \infinity”. Right now my “life flywheel” is “understand to create to understand”. I want to write more about this, but today I graphically designed something that touches upon this idea:

Writing: This post and a daily thought.

Digital Drawing & Painting:

Today I painted my perspective of my feet while I was drawing:

Fitness: Today I went to the gym at Brown and practiced my handstand, my human flag, and did my warmup/pull ups.

Piano: I found a real piano and it felt so surreal — more powerful to be playing with it because I could feel the vibrations of the music it generates. Don’t know why I didn’t feel these vibrations from my computer — they’re probably just stronger from the physical piano.

Soccer trick juggling: Enjoyed doing soccer trick juggling outside — it was dark but I went to a parking lot that had street lights.

Random Surprise

I went to “Salon” at Brown — a gathering of cool people where someone talks about an interesting topic. The speaker, a friend, talked about “strange loops” and how that relates to our sense of self.

Something to think about:

What generates your sense of self? And is there a final source or is it an infinite regress?

Read the next post. Read the previous post.

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