Time doesn't like being killed. 5 secret of personal effectiveness.

And time - it really doesn’t like being killed

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If you live every day as if it were your last, then sooner or later you will be right.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; this is only possible by looking back. So you have to believe that all the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to believe in something - your intuition, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't get caught in the net of dogma - don't live by the results of other people's thoughts. Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. (Steve Jobs).

My best friend always says - no problem, there will be something to remember later. What is our life anyway? After all, we ourselves are essentially our relatives who remember us, our acquaintances, our friends. And after we are gone, how many people will remember us? What about remembering? Who will come to our grave? I’m not a pessimist or a fatalist – I’m just wondering, do people even think about this? What can they remember? Memory is such a terribly inconvenient tool. We generally remember about 3% of what we see or hear. Think about it! By the age of fifty, we will remember 1.5 years of our life. And that's the best case scenario. And then there’s Parkinson’s disease and we don’t remember anything at all. Like in the movie "The Notebook". And who will we be then? And, unfortunately, things like a camera or camera don’t help us much with memories. They will never convey those sensations, those thoughts or smells that were at that particular moment. Sometimes you walk down the street and a smell hits you, painfully familiar, it awakens the strangest memories - suddenly you find yourself a 3-year-old child and your mother took you to the park, and you tried cotton candy for the first time in your life and saw sharply smelling cars that rush around the area, fenced with a metal mesh... Oops - where am I? I'm 26, I'm going to work. What kind of cotton candy or cars? And this light, completely elusive moment, because it exists - somewhere there, in the hidden recesses of the mess that is called memory. But only after 3 minutes we cannot remember sensations, feelings, or thoughts - we are again only here and now...

We live a huge life by our standards. We have plenty of time to do everything the way we want it. If you want, become a president, if you want, become a musician. It's never too late to start - the main thing is not to descend into a dull existence from work to TV, from drinking to hangover. You really need to live every day with zest and passion, not waste useless time thinking “what should I do?” After all, then it turns out that most of such a short and gray life is behind us. And you haven’t done everything yet, you haven’t done what you wanted. Didn't say the right words, didn't talk to the right people. And you will never do this again. You stayed at the stop - but your bus left and will never come again. You are waste material.

And time – it really doesn’t like being killed (L. Carroll).

How the “black queen theory” affects self-realization

In Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book “Alice in Wonderland,” the Cheshire Cat says to the main character: “To stay in one place you need to run as fast as you can, and to get somewhere you need to run at least twice as fast!”

In the next book, “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” the following dialogue takes place between Alice and the Red Queen: “With us,” said Alice, hardly catching her breath, “when you run as fast as you can for a long time, you will certainly end up in another place.” - What a slow country! - cried the Queen. “Well, here, you know, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.”

Actually, this is where the term “Black Queen Theory” , denoting a concept whose essence can be formulated as follows: “With respect to the evolutionary system, a species requires constant change and adaptation in order to maintain its existence in the surrounding biological world, which is constantly evolving with it.”

When the “old horse” spoils the furrow...

What does this mean for us?

Yes, everything is very simple - in the modern world everything changes very quickly and an attempt to live your whole life “on the same wavelength,” in youth parlance, “doesn’t work.” In other words, if you are used to working “in the old way” and do not want to learn “new tricks,” then most likely “the winds of change will knock you to the sidelines of history.”

The fact is that, being in a static position, we do not stand still, but confidently and singingly roll back, that is, we degrade. This is again easy to see in the example of excess weight - if you stop controlling your eating habits (i.e. “staying in place”), then you won’t even notice how you gain a dozen or two or three extra “fat” kilograms.

If you go through the day without doing anything to move forward even a millimeter, then it seems that nothing terrible has happened. Ten days - it also seems like nothing special (although he could already be at least a centimeter ahead, but it turns out that he has rolled back a centimeter) A hundred days - it’s probably worth worrying about (after all, it’s already -10 cm) A thousand days - it’s getting scary (rolled back by meter back) It’s still not far to the “hole” from which you can’t get out...

Discovery of Csikszentmihalyi

There is one reliable recipe for all these nightmarish horrors - to be in a “flow state”. That flow into which we enter when we are engaged in our work in life (our favorite thing), i.e. self-actualization (the concept of flow was proposed by the American psychologist of Hungarian origin Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi).

The “state of flow” is a very powerful thing and it is in it that famous artists and athletes get their outstanding results and set records. This, I am not afraid to say, is a state of achieving the highest mastery.

A person who is moving towards his Great Goal is able to enter a “flow state” faster and easier than everyone else. For him, this is almost a natural process that he can plunge into whenever he wants. And this allows him to get ahead of external circumstances and “win against the Black Queen.”

As part of the “Building a New Life” , special emphasis is placed on teaching a person to enter a state of flow and stay in it for as long as possible. This is necessary to get “above average” results.

Flow state vs. procrastination

One of the painful problems of modern man is procrastination or, in simpler terms, constant putting things off and internal self-sabotage. It seems like you have to do things, and you understand how important and necessary it is, and not what you want!

People try to fight procrastination by inventing all sorts of tricks, tricks, tricks and techniques. All of this is, by and large, complete bullshit. And it works over very short distances.

In order not to suffer from procrastination, a person must be able to stay in a “state of flow”, and for this you need to have a healthy consciousness, which, again, cannot be achieved without self-realization through the work of life (your favorite thing). Everything is connected!

Therefore, if you want to be one step faster and a cut above, find your Life Path and start moving along it, self-realizing through your life’s work!

How fast do you have to run to stand still?

Have you ever wondered why wages are rising, but life is not getting better? Naturally, the conversation is not about the fact that ten years ago you hacked wherever you had to, but now you are a highly paid specialist.

Let's use mathematics and sleight of hand to talk about how much wages should increase so that the standard of living does not decrease.

Inflation in the natural environment

Inflation is not a one-time event. It happens little by little, but constantly. When Rosstat tells us that for 2021 inflation was 4.9%, this does not mean that the evil fairy waved her magic wand and prices rose on December 31.

Prices are monitored throughout the year, monthly and quarterly inflation is compiled based on them, and at the end of the year the annual figure is announced. Here you can see inflation by month.

It should be separately noted that the inflation calculation method shows the average temperature in the hospital. If dumplings and vodka become cheaper, but at the same time apples and cottage cheese rise in price by the same amount, then overall inflation will be zero. However, alcoholics will begin to live better, and people with lifestyles will live worse.

As a rule, the source of inflation data is an estimate of the cost of the most common goods and services, that is, the consumer basket. And the consumer basket does not take into account, for example, your desire to listen to Yandex.Music without advertising and prices for VPS in a Dutch data center.

The composition of the consumer basket generally raises a number of questions. Not everyone can eat forty-three and a half kilograms of “fresh and sauerkraut” in a year and limit themselves to a kilogram of cookies in the same year.

If you look at housing price inflation, everything is still more “average”. For example, in the city of Barnaul, Altai Territory, no one has heard about jumps in apartment prices, but Moscow prices easily beat Bubka’s achievements.

Charismatic world pole vault champion

But, of course, we believe Rosstat data, we love cabbage and consider ourselves average Russians.

Sleight of hand and no fraud

So, inflation is a constant process. There seems to be a salary increase too, but not quite like that. It is less permanent.

Let's assume that we have an average programmer Vasily. He got a job on January 1st, contrary to the labor code and common sense. He works well, but doesn't want to learn anything new. The cost of his work is constant and amounts to 100,000 rubles per month. Inflation is also constant at 4.9%. So how much should his annual salary increase be to compensate for inflation?

At first glance, 4.9%, but this is not so.

If you use the above data, it turns out that Vasily begins to become cheaper every month, but at the end of the year it catches up with inflation. However, over the course of a year he loses his quality of life, albeit insignificantly, but noticeably

As a result, it turns out that by the new year Vasily began to live 4.9% worse and received less than 20,214.5 rubles. Well, it doesn't seem to be that bad.

Let's assume that Vasily works in a good company, where his salary was increased in accordance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and even increased, now he is paid 105,000 rubles. Happy ending, everyone is dancing.

But for everything to be completely good, we need to scatter this amount and pay it to Vasily over the next year, that is, his salary should be

100,000 + 4900 (inflation) + 1684.5 (underpaid) = 106,584 rubles

Still doesn't look too bad. Well, they under-raised the salary by 0.98%, which is unnoticeable.

Long-term perspective

Now let's rewind time five years forward. Every year, the employer honestly gave Vasily a salary without taking into account losses due to inflation, everything went as usual. Even inflation remained the same. And it became...

Losses are wages lost due to inflation

Somehow Vasily felt completely sad. The accumulated underpayment has become quite noticeable, up to 10% monthly.

Conclusion

It must be admitted that the quality of life and the amount of salary, although they correlate, do not have a direct relationship. And yet, they correlate.

In order not to lose on inflation, it is not enough to annually multiply your salary by inflation. The above graphs reflect a fairly typical situation, that is, the inflation graph by month generally looks like this - growth and decline occur during the same periods. Using this, we can estimate the amount of compensation for inflation. According to rough estimates, in order to “stand still” it is necessary to increase wages by the amount of inflation + another 35% of the inflation rate.

But in reality, of course, these numbers should be higher. The percentage of material goods in your personal consumer basket that depend on the exchange rate adds a considerable amount of uncertainty to these calculations, and does not at all reduce the final amount.

The conclusion is simple - ask for a salary increase every year and by an adequate amount. Well, be happy.