The Foundation ✱ ᐃ

future-city-1-by-pete-amachree.jpg (113.2 KB)

The foundation is a set of guiding principles, values, processes and systems to live an optimal life as a human. Is also called Codex o Codex Vitae.

With the foundation I try to set an explicit structure to my life that guide me to live my life as productive and fulfilling as I want.

This is a tool for me, to remember what are my values, how to evaluates life circumstances and what are my priorities.

This sets of principles are in constant evolution, that’s why I share them so others can use them as a base or template.

Sometimes is hard to remember how to live your life, for me this document is a way to list everything I want to remember when the bad times comes. I do not believe this values are for living a happy life, there will be sometimes that we need to remember our values or our guiding principles when things goes bad, but if we can get back on track, that is what this is for.

{{the-foundation-design-system}} is like the aestethics part of this, I’m trying to maintain a design in every system, software or piece of media I create.

How to use this?

Todo lo que explico y comparto acá son cosas que me funcionaron a mi, eso no quiere decir que te funcione a vos también. La idea de esto es que puedas leerlo y si te interesa, implementarlo.

No todo lo que vas a encontrar acá te va a servir, no es la idea.

La idea es mantener un set de reglas y guías con las que yo elijo vivir mi vida. Y que me sirven para tomar decisiones y aceptar las cosas que me suceden.

Dentro de las cosas que ya nombre, esto sirve principalmente para:

• Examinar mi vida, mis creencias y mis valores.
• Cambiar y modificar lo que sea necesario, para vivir una vida mas acorde a lo que realmente me importa.
• Aceptar y estar dispuesto a los cambios. Nada, nunca, dura para siempre.

The Foundation consists of the following:

• Meta
• Principles
• Guidelines
• Topics
• Process
• Interests

Meta

• for those things that we cannot answer, let the science take the question and learn from that.
• as writing this, i’m more related to determinism, but i continue pushing my beliefs.

Principles

• I am a human, I am not a job title, nor a university title, nor a description.
• Remain objective and with the mind fully open.
• Question the status quo, don’t wait the change to come, work the change out.
• I am not gonna live forever, I don’t want to live forever, but I want to live fully.
• What is right is much more important than who is right.

Guidelines

These set of guidelines can and will change in the future, some will evolve into something completely different and some will stay intact, but I think that’s the main purpose of this, the purpose of this is to have a place to easy remember what I’m living for.

Keep it simple and don’t get attached

Less is more. Living in a interconnected world, where we are at two clicks away from learning something new, watching a movie or buying something new keeping our life simple and owning less things is hard.

Also this is related to the software development principle {{kiss}}. The part of become successful is need more -> this is the consumer culture we live in.

Don’t get attached to temporary things. This is related with you are not your job title and less is more. Everything is temporary.

Make things more atomic, to make decisions more quickly.

Receive without conceit, release without struggle.
{{Marcus Aurelis}} - Meditations

Focus on the north

No importa si no llego, importa tener el norte hacia donde ir. Importa el camino, el proceso de aprendizaje. Buscar link.

Watch out for distractions

Internet is the greatest tool we have nowadays, but also is the biggest generator of distractions. We have almost everything 1 or 2 clicks away. Watch out for that. Jumping between distractions (social media, gaming, un-prioritized task) can cause anxiety, and anxiety reduce the to the minimum the freedom we have.

Time is a resource that we can’t get back or generate. Take care of how you manage your time. You can do anything, buy no everything. I think that one of the best thing you can have in your life is the option / right to choose, but be careful of the idea of freedom in terms of things to choose, because you end not knowing what to choose.

Move away from safe and comfort

There are a lot of things we can’t have control of, but there are some that we have full control. Moving away from where we are safe is one of the biggest fear, but hides a big reward. Lean into discomfort.

Push harder to your limits, find comfort in constant moving. Keep going, get better, follow the path to mastery, learn.

Memento Mori

This is related with all the principles that talk about time. I think this is necessary to help us create real perspective. To remind that time is a gift and we don’t want to waste it on trivial and vain. As {{Marcus Aurelis}} says “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Focus on the now and balance

No matter where you go, there you are. Give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.

Balance between family, hobbies and work is one of the most important things. It’s hard to get it done well, but is neccessary to grow a balanced healthy life.

Journal and reflect

Journal for yourself. Reflect for your future self.

Pain + Reflection = Progress.

For me, one the most important aspect of {{journaling}} is getting rid of the emotional thinking by writing it out and freeing my mind. Write about anything, write about everything, write.

Keep going

Know that the fear that we will succeed exists. The fear to become the person we sense in our hearts also exist. Accept it but keep going. Referrer to {{ACT}}

Stress Culture

Take care of yourself. Do your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle this month by eating well, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, getting enough sleep and taking some time to relax. This will help you achieve your goals and cope with stress.

Topics

Food

• Everyone should learn basic cooking.
• We must grow our own food, whenever is posible.

Technology

• We have to fight to get everyone access to technology.
• We don’t need faster cars.
• We have to fight the IA future, we don’t need IA to pushing the limits of technology.

Process

The base processes are three, and are like the horizontal base from where all my interests and systems works:

• Reading
• Writing
• Coding

Almost everything I do, use one or more of these base processes. With this separation, I know that if I can become better in one of these aspects, I can leverage everything else.

process diagram (113.2 KB)

I think that reading is the more abstract of the three, it’s a bit harder to tell when
you become a better reader, but for me to become a better reader is to understand and choose what to read. To know if a book or a blog post is teaching you something new or are only letters in a screen.

Writing is the process that I practice the most. I write almost everyday, I try to document and share everything that I know or everything that happened to me. English is not my main language, that’s why I feel challenging writing in English, I try my best but sometimes is more easy explain what I’m thinking in Spanish.

By code, I mean coding, that’s writing code and thinking about code or how a systems needs to be done. I think this the easy one in terms of getting better. You know when you are learning new things o when you are in the path of mastery.

I think this 3 process are a bit basic, but that’s the idea. La idea es que son procesos que estan muy adentro y muy conectados con todo lo que me interesa, son partes fundamentales de la vida diaria y de esto dependen muchas otras cosas.

Interests

This is the list of my currents interests, without a particular order.

• Family
• Technology and Electronics
• Self-hosting
• Cyber-security
• Freedom
• Open Source Software
• Quantified Self
• Ham Radio
• Self Education
• Programming
• Writing

Después de mucho tiempo me di cuenta que tener un listado de intereses es un poco difícil para mi, por que si bien no me interesan muchas cosas distintas, es como que van cambiando a medida que voy creciendo o a medida que voy madurando en algunos aspectos. Entonces por eso decidí, listar intereses bastante abstractos si se quiere, que pueden abarcar un montón de aspectos internamente.