Others also were here:

• Gwenn – the guy from whom I learned about this place.

The first thing what you need to be productive is motivation. You need a reason to work responsibly, be it monetary payment, step in career, or recognition and reputation. Inspirations can be raised by TED talks. One can also program motivation using Meta states.

In order to stay calm and not to get lost in all perplexing tasks of large scope, it’s necessary to write down a list of tasks, assign priorities, and complete them one by one, not taking care about the rest. Usually I create a list of tasks for each project on a separate sheet of paper. When I complete a task, I strike it out from the list. When I complete the sheet of tasks, I throw it away. Every completion is like an accomplished mission. You can feel the progress visually. The method of writing tasks down and assigning priorities is called “Getting Things Done” by the book of the same name written by David Allen.

One needs breaks, otherwise the brain will burn. Some people go to smoke whereas I go to make tea from time to time. So I drink about 5 cups of tea a day. Usually I make tea-breaks between different tasks. One can find Pomodoro technique in the Internets which is about doing tasks in 25-minute intervals doing 5-minute breaks. The name is coming from a kitchen timer of a shape of tomato used to count time how long to cook food.

To keep my mind sharp and comprehending, I use quite a lot of caffeine in the form of coffee, tea, red bull, fritz cola or club mate. Usually a red bull drank after lunch keeps me productive for about six hours.

Routine and easy, but long tasks are best to do at the end of a day, when the organism is tired, but there is some power left.

Jade horses get shot. But who isn’t at risk, doesn’t drink champagne!

New York consists of five boroughs. They are Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. We settled and spent the most time in Manhattan – the island of skyscrapers. We visited Brooklyn, the borough of blacks, and the Bronx, the native land of hip hop. We stayed for five days relatively close to the central park and then another days in China Town, in a hotel where every person gets a room cabin of six square meters with only a bed and a shelf.

We have purchased New York City Passes, which allowed us to visit the main sightseeings with a discount and waiting in less queues. We saw the city from the highest building – Empire State Building – it looked similarly as from an airplane. Also we went around Manhattan by cruise ship also passing the Statue of Liberty. We walked by the embankment and had rest in parks. Also we walked in the Times Square – the street full of screens and advertisements washing your brains. Then you want hamburgers, M&M’s and Coke (to gnaw out the eaten food).

Now I’ll tell shortly about everything. Mc Donalds and Starbuck’s provide a free wifi access. People read electronic books on Amazon Kindle and similar readers in the subway. Buildings and subway trains have air conditioning. Public transportation is quite uncomfortable comparing to Berlin – there are no time schedules and it’s difficult to find stations to change trains. Electricity sockets differ from European and English, so you need adapters.

“Welcome to America, my darling!”, said a woman of a shape of a ball to her tiny friend, the waves mildly hit the embankment, and you could see the Statue of Liberty far far away. There are not so many fat people, but the S size of t-shirts in America is the same as M size in Europe. There are not so many smoking people. Bouncers at the bars demand to show IDs to check the age. There are people leading two or three dogs at once.

During the nights mice and big cockroaches run in the streets. People of homeless lifestyle sleep under staircases. Somewhere the drain holes smoke. Water drops down from air conditioners attached to windows. How hot the weather can be! The streets are full of sacks of rubbish at nights. China Town smells of fish.

The transportation system reminds Grand Theft Auto. There are lots of different cars including limousines. There are lots of taxis. Cutters, Yachts and Cruise Ships float at the piers. The most impressive thing in the architecture are Gothic churches build between many-storied buildings. One of the twins is being rebuilt again close to the original place where a memorial will be built.

That’s my mixture of impressions. I was lack of alternative people and places. I liked the trip, but I would go there next time only if I had some business there.

1. Write a list of your problems. Self-criticism is a good thing. Self-hating is a bad thing. Sensibly define your problems to yourself. Problem recognition is the first step to solve it.
2. Behave as those who don’t have this problem. You are unlucky because you do something differently than those who are lucky. Learn from those who succeed. Copy their best features.
3. Purchase a book or search for the solution of the problem online. How to get a wanted job, how to find a partner, what to eat to loose weight – you can get all this information in the internets or in the books.
4. Get a thing or a service that solves your problem. Increase the ability to see by laser operation. Use plastic surgery. Do hair attachment. Visit a speech therapist. Make a makeup… If you really need that.
5. Train yourself. Do exercises regularly to get rid of your problem. If you have overweight, run in the mornings. If you have sexual problems, do Kegel’s exercises. If your oratory is limited, write a blog. If your eyesight is weak, do sight exercises.
6. Hide your problem. At least temporarily one can hide his imperfection. Chewing gum can hide a bad smell from the mouth. A hat can hide a bald head. Dark cloths can hide protruding belly. Closed lips can hide wry teeth. Deodorant can hide the smell of perspiration.
7. Pack your problem as personal uniqueness. Maybe you inherited some feature from your family. It’s not necessary to look at it as to a problem. You can look at it as to an originality not owned by the majority.
8. Draw attention to things that you have best or can do best. Oratory, sense of humor, creativity, career achievements, or loving second half can successfully drown personal imperfections.
9. Get something that diverts attention from your problem. So what that you can’t pronounce some letters properly; that’s nothing compared to your new car. So what that you don’t have a job you like; you have a cool smartphone. So what that you don’t look like a supermodel; you still dress stylish. Sometime you need just a small thingy to divert attention, be it a brooch, a button or a ring.
10. Cooperate. Other people solve the same problems. Gang together to anonymous groups or forums online to solve your and others’ problems.

While writing this entry, I uncovered a pile of my own problems and that made me sad. Anyway, I hope this will help to understand your own problems and find ways to solve them.

If the luck of your life is based only on one need where you give your attention, for example, outer looks, money, or relationships with another person, then in the case when this thing falls appart for some external reasons, you might fall into total depression leading your personality to low self-esteem or even suicide.

If your life is based on many activities like human relations, career, social networking, traveling, creativity, hobbies, etc. then in the case of catastrophe in one of the areas, the situation won’t impact on you too much.

You have to educate yourself in all the areas that interest you and not to be afraid to adapt to novelties or create original solutions.

Here I remember an article in which Richard Brandson from the Virgin company mentioned that he started investing into the flights to the open space, because if he had only given all his attention to records, the company might get into risk of crumbling, as nowadays people share MP3 for free on the internet (I can’t find the article now to provide a link to it).

Changes are the only stability.

1. The idea that it is a dire necessity for adults to be loved by significant others for almost everything they do.
   
2. The idea that certain acts are awful or wicked, and that people who perform such acts should be severely damned.
3. The idea that it is horrible when things are not the way we like them to be.
   
4. The idea that human misery is invariably externally caused and is forced on us by outside people and events.
   
5. The idea that if something is or may be dangerous or fearsome we should be terribly upset and endlessly obsess about it.
   ( )
6. The idea that it is easier to avoid than to face life difficulties and self-responsibilities.
   
7. The idea that we absolutely need something other or stronger or greater than ourself on which to rely.
   ( )
8. The idea that we should be thoroughly competent, intelligent, and achieving in all possible respects.
   ( )
9. The idea that because something once strongly affected our life, it should indefinitely affect it.
   
10. The idea that we must have certain and perfect control over things.
    ( )
11. The idea that human happiness can be achieved by inertia and inaction.
    
12. The idea that we have virtually no control over our emotions and that we cannot help feeling disturbed about things.

(The list was googled and copy-pasted from Personality Theories)

On the other hand, if you are tolerant to everything and have no beliefs, then one can record any nonsense into you.

Every morning I stop time under the shower diving into memories, analyzing flows of life, causes and effects, or just not thinking at all. In the meanwhile, the water murmurs and makes me calm. Water-counter spins whereas African kids have nothing to drink.

I’ve understood that I need that murmur in my life as much as I need music. When I am old, I shall want to live somewhere close to a fountain or to waterfalls, so that I can sit down at falling water and stay there for hours, either talking with my friends and relatives, or just being alone… with facebook.

It’s the sound, it’s the murmur that creates this state of mind. The sound is called Pink noise. That’s a noise of specific frequencies, usually found in the nature, and having this calming effect. Lapping of waves, the blow of wind, murmur of rain, cracking of fire – all of those create the pink noise. The feeling of calmness maybe came from prehistoric times when it happened to rain and humans hid into caves at fireplaces and calmed down, because there was nothing else to do, was there?

From ancient times human beings are able to recreate the pink noise by applause. What is just an unconscious tradition nowadays, might have had a practical purpose in the past. Artificial pink noise was as a present to respectful people. Nowadays all sounds from nature can be recreated by ipods, gramophones, and tape-recorders. The pink noise is one of the special effects in music, movies, and games, where it is important to convey emotions or so to say manipulate emotions. I shall use it in my life too not only in the 3D audio game.

So water is necessary not only to reduce thirst and to wash your feet, but also for the joy of the soul, so to say. But now I got thirsty somehow and shall go to drink tea.

I learned at University that a human being can be viewed from different perspectives:

• What you are in reality.
• How you see yourself.
• How others see you.
• How you believe others see you.

Also I would add these:

• How others believe you see yourself.
• How others believe you believe others see you.

Dream further! You are not interesting that much to anybody except yourself…

In general, it’s worth understanding that how you feel yourself, how you pose, and how you look to others – these are all different images.

I remember a friend Mindaugas from my childhood who was the first person in my life communicating with friends differently than with parents. He was a naughty madcap among his friends, but exemplary polite son at home. Was that double-facedness or just integration?

Moral standards teach you to be yourself everywhere, and that is set off against hypocrisy which tends to be a bad feature. Unfortunately being yourself directly means staying the same as people expect you to be with all your faults, imperfections, and inabilities. What if it’s possible to stay yourself even being different with different people? What if being yourself is not important?

“Which of my images is the real one?” Juste got confused once.
“You are real with all your images!” I noticed.

Some writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote this:

We are what we pretend to be…

or so to say paraphrased:

Fake it until you make it.

In essence, we can be anyone we want, we just need to work on that (ok, maybe some people have better skills to achieve some goals, whereas others have better skills to achieve other goals).

Why is it important to be able to change? That’s because of recognition within groups of people who are important to you. Nobody likes to be alienated. Even those who are pushed away from the mainstream, gather together to groups of abandoned.

Alternatives also belong to groups. All in all, mainstream and alternatives are two opposed groups which are easy to understand for superficial-thinking ones. The world consists of many subcultures and one person might belong to several of them. Even if you feel being an original individualist, you still belong to a group of individualists walking on this planet somewhere among 6 billion people. Being anonymous is also one of the images.

During Rocío’s birthday we noticed this almost unanimously:

Even if you stay at home alone on Saturday evening crying about your miserable life, you still belong to a group of people who don’t go anywhere on Saturday evenings crying about their miserable lives.

Belongings to some groups define personal identity. I am Lithuanian, hacker, blogger, inline-skater, unfortunate game developer, party guy, workaholic, traveler, artist, aristocrat… Because I am from Lithuania, I think about security holes all the time, I live in blogosphere, I belonged to the club of Vilnius’ inline-skaters, etc.

By belonging to a group, a person automatically adds a label to himself, which in some cases might be inappropriately interpreted by other people.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

With the growth of internet and social networking, self branding became accessible to everyone, not only to the famous ones. Depending on how you represent yourself online, you can be successful or unsuccessful at work or personal life (actually, even before internet, people cared what others thought about them). In order not to get alienated in a group, you need to integrate there. You need to learn the context, take up with it, and by the values of people within the context, find a way to stand out to achieve what you want.

For example, it’s right to start a thread about design patterns in programmers’ forum, it’s right to tell stories about creepy hitch-hiking adventures in a group of travelers, it’s right to show a new skating trick to inline-skaters, it’s right to dive into the ecstasy of flirting and intimacy during a date… But usually it’s not right to mix everything. Everything is in its place and time. All different groups of people have different contexts and you have to adapt yourself to them, unless your purpose is to be distinguished radically and to gain everybody’s attention (until your pranks become boring).

So we all fall under statistics. Businesses use that while searching for target groups. One thing to remember that it’s not always right to put the whole person to the target group. Only specific part related to specific activity can get to the target group. And the parts change in time.

For example, by measuring time, I am 5% of clubber, 12% of web socializer, 27% of programmer, 33% of sleeper⁽¹⁾, and the rest 23% of spontaneous activist and daily-chores doer. So my time distribution at the moment is as shown, but it differs from what there was and what there will be, not necessarily depending on age, but rather on interests and priorities in the surrounding environment.

Regarding online social networks, it is important

1. to provide a possibility for people to create groups by interest.
2. to provide a possibility to restrict access to data which should be reached only by a specific group.

I would propagate the openness of information, but then I remember the example at a presentation that a young teacher in New York might not want her under-age students and their parents to see wild-party photos of her gay friends. So everyone should be able to choose how much publicity he wants.

You can look at yourself or the other one as at different parts, or as the whole, or as a part of a whole; and you will be always right. The other question is for what purposes you will use that?

⁽¹⁾ Once again, I declare an outrage that I spend one third of my life just by sleeping! Why are living-beings so non-effective!? There would be so many interesting things to do during that time! BTW, there are some signs sprayed on the walls in Berlin saying “Sleep is commercial”. But that is already another story..

On one hand, it seems that you deserved that good enriched spare time after five days working eight or more hours and pushing your limits at a computer solving different technical problems. I like my job, but as in any other job, there happen things that are too difficult, very risky or just boring and making you tired, but you still need to do that yourself. Then a weekend comes, and you having robotic head go to a semi-bar semi-club to meet friends, talk to strangers, or just dive deep into trance while listening to music. Usually one club is not enough. You get hooked and go further. The night ends up at 1 PM at a cheap food store buying yogurt and pelmeni to revitalize your body. What’s the point of that exhaust? Why do I need that hardcore? Because of all those moments that I see and experience while living such a life, which are only dreams to others.

On the other hand, the speed of achieving your objectives slows down because of those parties. I worked on Halma game probably just a couple of weeks per year all in all. And I would already like to start new games, and analyzing and learning new technologies. From practice I know that all wishes become true, but it takes much more time than you plan. And when you spend more than half of your weekend in a dizzy state, it seems impossible at all to achieve something personal. I have a conspiracy theory that alcohol and various illegal drugs are indirectly propagated to lower the possibilities of the masses, so that these who manage the world in the underground, would stay in their leading position. Oh. I hate politics. At least it’s good that nobody forces anyone to drink alcohol, as well as one can break the norms and traditions. I like to choose by myself when to be dizzy and when to have clear mind.

I also noticed that different places I visit associate with different drinks, because of drinking them there. For example, Club der Visionäre associates with Augustiner beer, I order gin-tonic at Bar 25 by default, I tried and liked shots of Borgmann at Salon zur wilden Renate, and I usually choose absinth with RedBull at Watergate and Berghain. It’s the culture of alcoholism, isn’t it? The drinks are drinks. Sometimes I need them, sometimes not. The most important to me here is the objective of socialization. I want to get rid of the last bits of shyness and hesitation so that I could live the rest of my life only with those limits which are not dependent on me. And I feel the progress of achieving that.

I like living like this. I just don’t wanna stuck in the whirl of partying. I should probably go clubbing just one night per week and spend the rest of my free time at home at a computer.

Sometimes it seems that until you put your plans, ideas, or rules point by point, your life is totally messed up and chaotic. Classified information is easier to understand, to memorize, and to believe in. So we cut the reality into pieces and digitize it. Then we accept it as static and true and start following the items.

However, one should never forget that all bulleted truths are true only in the time and conditions of their creation, having a limited amount of information and being influenced by specific circumstances. That’s because the perception of reality is subjective and partial, no matter how wide it is.

So it’s worthy every once in a while, to take personally important things, which you keep in your mind item after item, then re-evaluate them, maybe add some more, and maybe regroup them. Also I agree with Giedrius, who says that it’s good to have items as the basis which can be used to build other things on top of them.

There are good points about personal progressiveness in the speech of magician and mentalist Jason Randal: