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Schalk
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Technology: Humanity’s Double Edged Sword

Biologically, you and I are very similar to our forefathers who lived as simple animals hunting and gathering on the African plains. 

The key difference between now and then is the degree to which we have used technology to manipulate our environment to our benefit. 

Technology has improved our lives in countless ways. We must acknowledge that and be very thankful for it.

But I’m sure you’ll agree that technology also has a dark side. 

Luckily, smart individual choices can allow us to tap all the awesome benefits from technology, while avoiding the problems it creates. 

That is the focus of the fifth chapter of Supermorning. 

Technology revolutions

There are four key technology revolutions that got us to where we are today:

  • Agricultural: Stupendous increases in food production.
  • Industrial: Stupendous increases in the production of stuff. 
  • Techno-scientific: Stupendous increases in rate of change and technological power.
  • Digital: Stupendous increases in the amount of easily accessible information. 

The astute among you will notice the recurring use of “stupendous increases”. That’s what a technological revolution does. It lets us do more.

And not just a little more – a stupefying amount more. 

More is better… up to a point

Both us and our environment have limited capacity. Hence, it’s only logical that stupefying increases only help up to a point. 

This is best captured by the marginal utility curve: the increase in benefit derived from increased use of a technology, good or service. 

At the start, the marginal utility of most technologies is highly positive. But as saturation is approached, marginal utility becomes insignificantly low or even negative. 

Humanity’s problems with technology all stem from our inability to stop our increased use when the marginal utility curve turns negative. 

A journey through the revolutions

To drive this point home, we’ll spend the rest of the week on a little trip through the four technological revolutions listed above. 

See you tomorrow when we see how the agricultural revolution gave us total caloric abundance. 

Schalk
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Practice What You Preach: December Edition

All the tips and strategies shared on this blog are fully implemented in my own life. This is a fascinating experiment, the results of which are shared in the monthly Practice What You Preach series.   

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. All my seven streaks are still alive and well:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 472 consecutive good days.  
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 259 days.
  • Music practice. After a recent stumble, this streak is back up to 62 days.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 163 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been a full 4008 days since the last time I was sick.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 278 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been eight consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. Easy 🙂

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’m conducting an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below. A moderate gain in stocks cancelled out my living expenses, causing a small increase in financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle). 

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 15% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

December did not start so great, but finished strong. In total, I reached 242 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 114 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music). Thus, fully 72% of my waking hours were productive in December. 

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube).

I’m happy to report that the downward trend in my very productive time over the past five months has been broken in December. 

Overall, December proved to be a fitting end to a very interesting decade. I wonder what the next decade has in store… 

Schalk
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Practice What You Preach – October Edition

One of the founding principles of this blog is that I can only share ideas and strategies that have proven to yield great results in my own life. The Practice What You Preach series keeps me accountable to this principle.     

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. All my seven streaks are still in good shape:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 397 consecutive good days. 
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 184 days.
  • Music practice. I’ve managed to work in a little bit of music for the past 157 days straight.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 107 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been 3932 days since the last time I was sick. More about this 10-year journey can be found here.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 203 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been five consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. Easy 🙂

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’ve recently started an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below.

October was one of those rare months with sizable gains in both stocks and metals. These gains easily outpaced my living expenditures, causing a nice jump in financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle). I wish every month could be like this one 🙂

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 9% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

October got off to a good start, but a surprisingly large number of social events late in the month caused a bit of a slowdown towards the end. It was fun though, so no worries 🙂

Even so, I reached 225 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 108 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music).

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube). 

In general, my long-term productivity trends are still moving in the right direction.

So, October will go down as another solid month. Now for the gloomiest month of the year: November. It will also kick off with some work travels that I’m not particularly looking forward to.  

In other words, the next 30 days not be plain sailing, which makes it a good test for the principles on this blog. It will be interesting to see what the numbers say in 5 weeks’ time…