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Last night I finished Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and I figured I’d write a quick review on it. It’s a book on the life of an Irish working-class woman named Paula who is struggling with an abusive husband and attempting to keep her family from the brink that her husband creates. The details in this book are what make it particularly excellent writing. The lead character recalls incredibly specific details that bring her tragic story to life. There’s a few mildly absurd elements to the book, but they’re grounded in the unrelenting reality the lead character describes. A chipped plate, the heat from a bag of chips on a cold day, an attempt to describe the burning sensation of being repeatedly kicked in the back. These elements are what kept me turning the pages. ...

Over the last year I’ve been cultivating a mindfulness habit. Overall, it has delivered great results. One of the aspects I’ve been less than happy with however, is my ability to carry that mindful state with me throughout the day. I’m unsure if it’s because I’m a programmer and my mind has to be so wrapped up in what I’m doing that mindfulness will inevitably get pushed out or if it’s simply that full-day mindfulness isn’t possible for me. ...

Recently I watched Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, after reading through some of the Criterion info on Kurosawa I realised I’d watched a bunch of his movies, I’m a huge fan of Seven Samurai. The Criterion Collection is a wonderful distribution company and I’m a huge fan of a number of their filmmakers, so much so that I wanted to try and support the service more. Since I live fairly lightly in terms of possessions I can’t really justify $40 on a DVD or Blu-Ray. Especially since I’ll probably have moved elsewhere and be forced to ditch the media before I can watch it a second time. It’s a shame when distribution companies haven’t really adopted digital distribution. I am aware that Criterion is on Hulu(now something else), but unfortunately as I’m not a US resident I can’t access/support it. If you are and can access it, I highly recommend checking out some of their movies. ...

Leo Babuta describes meditation as the fundamental habit, the underlying habits beneath all others. Personally, I disagree. I wrote recently on how I cope with meditation when you haven’t had a particularly good nights sleep. Realistically washing your face is like taking painkillers after a serious injury, it’s only painting over the cracks of a deeper problem. Meditation and mindfulness truly can unlock the potential of your day, but a good nights rests can even more. Sleep is a physical process that underlies every waking moment. So to actively take the time to develop good sleep habits should improve every other aspect in your life, including meditation. ...

This article was shared with me recently, it’s an excellent read and provides some good reasoning for why people feel that vague sense of living an unaccomplished life. I’ll admit it, I am most definitely a Gypsy. My garden right now it full of flowers of unrealistic expectations. I’d begun to discover this while meditating and watching my emotions daily. In Headspace there’s a section called the discovery series. You begin to focus on watching your emotions throughout the day and when your mind gets distracted and wanders. More specifically you watch the ways in which you wish things were different. You begin to notice the gulf between reality and fantasy. ...

In the mornings I had a very structured routine. The first thing I would do is meditate as for me, all other habits flow from this. Then after my meditation I would either go for a run or do some dumbbell based strength exercises. The reasoning being that as exercising was also a quiet periods, I could try extending the mindfulness and clarity gained from meditation into my exercises and have a better chance of remaining mindful throughout the day. ...

Xmonad - Xmonad is a Haskell based window manager for both Linux and Mac(sorry Windows users). It’s highly configurable but for me it’s lack of features and application bar crap is a real advantage. The application your currently working with takes up the entirety of the screen and you navigate to other applications using keyboard shortcuts. Using this and disabling notifications in your IM/Email/whatever clients forces you to work on the task in front of you. It’s very pleasing to use after a while. ...

So you’ve removed your distractions and figured out how to maintain focus. You’ve a set of good habits you’d like to being implementing. Well firstly, read this. Don’t jump head first into habits you’ve never gone through before. You’re expectations will be too high and sadly, you’ll likely fail. Patience is a virtue. So, after you’ve chosen the habit you’d like to begin with, here are some tools to help keep you focused on those good habits. ...

So the final process I use to help me get shit done is reviewing. Each week I do a fairly lengthy review of the last week. I see what habits have been successful and which have been a struggle to maintain. I look to see if there are appropriate alterations I can use to help improve. Here’s a list of the things I tend to analyse while reviewing, and the questions I’ve asked. ...

Over the course of this blog I intend to show how limitations can in many ways bring positive changes in your life. While limitations can appear under various guises(vegetarianism, minimalism) etc there is a huge number of aspects in your life where you can benefit from limits, just without the grandiose terms behind them. Why? If you’ve ever attempted to meditate, you’ll realise that the human mind is insane. It’s cannot help but leap from one random thought to the next, like an irritated monkey in a cage. Seriously, just attempt to think about your breath for any extended period and you’ll realise how helpless you are to it(unless you’re trained of course). I recently watched a documentary by Adam Curtis called Century of the Self. If you haven’t watched it, I’d highly recommend it. Essentially it’s about the rise of the concept of the self and how corporations have sought to exploit it. I won’t go into too much detail but the important parts for this post are that during post-WW2 America, corporations had a genuine fear that they would run out of consumers. ...