Starting 2013

I found a very appropriate movie I just watched recently which I'd recommend to everyone during this season, the transitioning of years. It is called In Time, starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake. It's a science fiction movie with a unique, yet morbidly fascinating, premise: humans have been genetically altered/evolved to exist in a completely time-based social economy, making the saying "time is money" much less abstract. People in this society stop physiologically aging at the age of twenty-five, however there is a catch. Monetary currency has been entirely eliminated, and people are biochemically programmed with a countdown clock, where the time of their chronological lifespan can be increased or decreased, giving one a variable "expiry date". When the countdown has timed down to all zeros in a person, all of their metabolic functions cease entirely, and they simply die (time out). All transactions for goods, services, and living essentials are then made by directly exchanging units of time on and off one's lifespan. Time zones in this story don't mean global hourly differences, but rather they're gated communities where the elite classes (those who have banked centuries/millennia of longevity) are segregated away from those living in the time impoverished ghettos (those who literally live day to day on borrowed time). It makes one think a little more seriously about how we are exchanging, or wasting, our time in our life, and perhaps it prompted me greatly to give more thought about what I want to see happen for this new year.

What are my resolutions and ambitions? I haven't really thought them through with any great exacting detail, but the starting outline of them is as such:

• This year's general theme: Skills diversification, and daring to be different.
• Muses/Hacks/Motivators/Mnemonics/Reminders/Rationales:
• This is the first time since 1987, that all of the digits in the year number have been all different from each other
• "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" - Albert Einstein

• Method: Do many new and exciting things throughout the year that challenge and build on all my "intelligences"
• The intelligences are:
• Linguistic
• Mathematical
• Visual
• Physical
• Musical
• Emotional
• Social
• Environmental
• Spiritual
• Practical
• Mnemonic Affirmation: (L)et (M)y (V)arious (P)ositive (M)indful (E)ndeavors (S)erve (E)veryone (S)ensibly and (P)ractically

 

• The 13 books I want to read (re-read*) for 2013
1. The Four Hour Work Week* - Timothy Ferriss
2. The $100 Start Up - Chris Guillebeau
3. What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
4. Guns, Germs, and Steel* - Jared Diamond
5. Changeology - John C. Norcross
6. Eat to Live - Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
7. People Are Idiots, and I Can Prove It* - Larry Winget
8. The Writer's Idea Book - Jack Heffron
9. The Art of Nonconformity - Chris Guillebeau
10. The Manual of the Warrior of Light - Paulo Coelho
11. The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
12. Hyperspace - Michio Kaku
13. Embracing the Wide Sky - Daniel Tammet

• Starting Date to Commit to a Plan: January 6th, 2013
• Rationale/Reminder:
• Majorly ambitious changes for a whole year can't be organized within a single day, and doing so turns out to be just a rash and empty effort. It's probably why so many people fail at committing to their resolutions in the first place. I've tried planning some within one day before; it just doesn't work. I'll need more than just today for plan and orchestrate things, and to make feasible timelines for the year. Hopefully five planning days will be enough.
• These first five days should be sufficient to start cleaning and organizing my space, and for ridding some of the impediments out of my place without it turning into a wasteful purge. e.g. enough time to eat the foods out of my fridge that are contra to my diet plan (instead of just throwing them out).
• I'll have this coming weekend off to do a last proper binge before things get serious
• January 6th starts on a Sunday, which makes it easier to formulate a week by week training plan
• On January 6th, there will be 360 days remaining of 2013. A good time to affect things to watch them come full circle.

• The 13 things I want to do on this first day of 2013:
• Go skiing with my friend
• Make a new batch of beer
• Nap
• Watch a Blu-Ray (Prometheus)
• Take Ella to the dog park
• Try a new recipe
• Call my family
• Start a new budget for my projects
• Clean out and organize office closet (and fitness equipment)
• Re-tune my guitar, and learn a few new chords
• Collect some books to sell
• Purge old files on hard drive
• Begin brainstorming stuff and collecting ideas for the next four days