I miss the train by 10 seconds

I miss the train by 10 seconds, after lying in bed too long and then having to rush madly. After being in such a hurry that I smudged the mascara down my face and failed to find my favorite shoes. After leaving the house without breakfast. After pedaling so hard on the way that the air feels hot and sticky.

I miss the train by 10 seconds because someone decided to close the doors 40 seconds early. After all this. After all that effort. I want to scream, rage at the employee who cheerfully calls "Too late for that train, love" across the platform. I want to make him, or anybody,  feel as miserable as I am feeling right now. There is a drunken sixteen year old inside me and she wants OUT. Now.

So I close my eyes and breathe. Feel my feet,  tingling from my dash across the station.  Feel the warm summer sun on my bare arms and face. Feel the weight of my backpack on my shoulders and the weight of my anger constricting my chest. Breathe. There is always another connection,  another chance.

I open my eyes: next train, 9:43, expected 9:48. And I laugh. 

Sometimes …

Sometimes, I just want to sit on a train and watch the world pass me by.

The psychology of creating happiness

I came across this TED talk quite a few weeks ago and have found my thoughts coming back to it time and time again. (You don’t need to watch it to read this article here)

In essence, the psychologist Dan Gilbert talks about how we humans have a curious way of making ourselves happy, pretty much no matter what actually happens to us. Whenever there is a choice (apparently especially if it is irreversible or made for us), we adjust our reality in such a way that we think we ended up with the best possible outcome. Really interesting about this is that this seems fairly independent of the original effect being negative or positive. As an example he cited people winning the lottery or loosing the use of their legs in an accident. According to his studies, a year after the life changing event, both groups are equally happy. If people get one of two possibilities (in his example a picture), they afterwards like the one they much got better and the one they didn’t get much less than before. He calls this process “synthesizing happiness” because we take a situation and change the image of it in our minds in such a way that the result makes us happy. We so to speak “create” happiness. This must mainly happen subconsciously as even people who cannot form new memories (due to some illness or accident) react in this way.

I don’t know about you, but I have actually observed this phenomena time and time again, both in myself and in other people. I can even see how it works. On the one hand there is the confirmation bias. After all, nobody likes to be wrong. It causes unpleasant feelings and we tend to avoid those. I think we therefore simply (subconsciously) decide that this was the right choice. Then we have to adjust our perception of reality to make it true because otherwise we will come across contradictions which show us that this decision would have been a mistake in itself. And remember, we don’t like mistakes.

I came across another mechanism that shows our dislike for mistakes in Daniel Kahnemann’s “Thinking: Fast and Slow”. According to some studies cited there, we plain simple have a habit of overstating the importance of information that fits our view of the world and dismissing things that contradict it, fairly regardless of the actual relevance of the information. We filter information so that we are right. This is of course handy when trying to come to grips with a situation we cannot change:  We just automatically focus hard on the bright spots and ignore the shadows.

Finally, “what you see is all there is”. This is a concept also introduced by Kahnemann and it states that we have a strong tendency to overstate the importance of information we have, as opposed to information we don’t have. In our choice problem from above, this means that the information on the existing situation, which we have already pre-filtered to be positive, seems much more important than all the information on all other possible options we missed out on. It is another filter that supports us in our choice, making the existing situation seem like the important one.

So in any situation where we missed out on an opportunity, whether by choice or not, we assure ourselves that we didn’t make a mistake by considering all the positives more important than the negatives and focusing on the information we have, as opposed to the one we don’t have. We make ourselves happy whatever happens, completely automatically. I find this an incredibly comforting thought, because it means that choices and opportunities in the end don’t matter that much. Happiness lies literally in any direction.

I have one main criticism with this theory though: Why does it seem to be working so badly for so many people? While I said above that I know many people for whom this seems to be true, I can also think of quite a few examples of people who are still bitter about something that happened years ago. Or of people who always seem unhappy, no matter what happens. Why are they not synthesizing happiness? Why does it mainly seem to be people with what I would call a positive attitude, who successfully apply the routine described above? I’d say this happens because the whole process isn’t quite as automatic as some people like to claim.

My guess is that the happiness synthesization procedure can be overridden by conscious thought. This would also explain why having the option of changing our minds does not make us happy but irreversible choices do. Imagine you were given a choice of two pictures and you picked one. You take it home with you, you put it up and sometimes, when you look at it, you might think “Yeah, that is my favourite colour. “ In that case, your brain would be free to run it’s happiness creation routine undisturbed. Your conscious thought might even fuel it.

But imagine what would have happened if you had been given the choice to go back at any time and change it? When you look at the picture now, you would probably start contemplating on whether this was really the right choice. “Wouldn’t the colour of the other picture look better in this room? And you never really liked that tree in the background there anyway.” With only these two sentences, you have already overridden your tendency to ignore negative information and to ignore information you don’t have. With that you have essentially destroyed the routine above and the happiness never comes to be. If, on the other hand, you look at the picture you have in a much more positive light, you will disturb your routine a lot less. That’s why I believe attitudes matter so much: we do have the ability to become happy in pretty much any situation, but we have to make sure we don’t destroy our brain’s attempt at getting us there.

Basically, don’t worry and you will be fine.

 

What do you think about this? Have you observed yourself or somebody else doing this?

 

(I would like to point out that I’m neither a psychologist nor an expert in this area. I’m just a curious mind with a stack of books. What I have written here might be utter and complete rubbish. Please feel free to disagree with me and write me angry comments/emails)

Three months on

So, it’s the beginning of September. I finished my last exam a little over three month ago and I’m still “not doing anything”. To be honest, it’s beginning to get to me even though I chose this. I’m getting restless and I’m struggling with the lack of direction in my life. It’s probably not helping that the Mister has recently thrown his plans to the winds as well, so we are both home most days, struggling with finding our way. I keep thinking that this was all a huge mistake and I should just have applied straight away and got on with it, like everybody else. I could be starting my PhD soon. I really don’t know anymore why I didn’t.

Of course I haven’t actually sat at home all this time and done nothing. I think my head would have imploded by now if I had. I spent a few weeks here, catching up on projects I had to put on hold during exam time, then I went on the annual family holiday and now I got back to London only a week ago. In two days time, the Mister and I are going travelling again but to be honest, I am currently less than excited. I’d trade that little holiday for a PhD and a plan in my life immediately, if I had the chance. I’m such a simple girl in many ways. All I want is some stability, a nice place to live for us, enough money to get by and a plan for the next few years. That really shouldn’t be so hard to get and I even technically know how to get it but deciding is scary and living with the uncertainty is even worse. I find myself paralyzed. I know what I should do next but I procrastinate heavily about it. I put it off, push it back and get more and more scared about writing a few silly emails. It’s so frustrating. Out of sheer panic, I don’t do anything which just feeds into this feeling of being being lost. I never thought this would be so difficult. I just want to hide from the world and at the same time, hiding makes me feel scared too. I keep telling myself I’m a big girl, I should just get on with it. I should be old enough to take responsibility for myself and go my way but inside, I feel so small.

I’m aware that this is a luxury problem. How many dream of having months just to themselves, to use their time as they please? I’m aware I’m being ridiculous. In comparison to many people, I don’t have any problems at all. I should just get over it, get on with it and sort myself out. Knowing how stupid I’m being is just making me feel worse. I’m sorry for ranting at you.

Jobs I would love to do

Who wouldn’t love to have so much money in the bank that you never have to work at all? That sort of thing aside, here are a list of jobs I would genuinely like to do and which I think are within my range if I set my mind to it. In no particular order:

1. Property development

I love houses, especially old and quirky ones and I think I got an eye for the potential in them. I would absolutely love to buy them up, refurbish them and then rent them out or sell them on. I’m seeing myself more in an investor and project manager role as actually doing the building works even though I wouldn’t mind some of that either. I definitely want to completely renovate at least one house in my life, preferably an unexpected one.

2. Research Psychology

I’m absolutely fascinated by questions concerning memory, decision making and character traits. Why are some people charismatic and others not? When is this sort of thing decided? Why do some have really good memory and others don’t? How do we pick partners, friends and foes (or a new sauce pan for that matter)?

3. Retail design

Yep, I’d really like to design shop interiors. This kind of brings together 1 and 2. I firmly believe to be a good retail designer one would have to have a good understanding of behavioural economics. After all, this is all about influencing consumers decision making, paired with some interior design.

4. Professor in Physics at a University

I’d want to do a mixture between doing my own research in theoretical physics and teaching at university level. I really enjoy many parts of this: the problem solving, the paper writing (yes, really) and I’m looking forward to the teaching as well even though I haven’t done it so far. This is the career I’m currently heading for.

5. Development work

This is a very vague category, mainly because I’m quite vague was to what this entails. I’d love to make a difference in this world and use my skills and privileges position to help others but I’m just not sure how to go about this. I checked the Unicef website yester and apart from a minimum age of 25, I learned that on has to have a degree and two years work experience in a relevant field even for a volunteering position. What is a relevant field?

6. Company Consulting

I did a brief stint of that a few years ago (just an internship) and I really enjoyed the content. I love problem solving and trying to come up with constructive ideas. I admittedly wouldn’t mind the money either but that’s not why I’d do it.

7. Be a scientist/engineer, setting up the occasional spin-out

A spin-out is a company that takes something developed in a research lab and turns it into a commercial product. Unfortunately, doing theoretical physics isn’t such a great combination with this, it needs more of a hands-on approach in the lab but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me so I doubt I will be working on only one topic for the rest of my life anyway. This is a future option I’m keeping in mind.

8. Be a Housewife and Mother

Surprised? Most people who know me probably would be but I do love children and enjoy most domestic tasks. I would like to bring up a large family and stay home looking after the kids. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to happen because it would be a waste of my pretty head, education and ambition apart from the fact that I think it would put an unfair financial responsibility on my (hypothetical) husband. I will however try my very best to mix having a family with something else.

I’m sure there are more jobs I would like to do if I knew more about them/could think of the right now/came across them so this list is by no means exhaustive.

 

If you could pick completely freely right now, what would you love to do?

The Mnemonic Major System–Introduction

Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on my history project, I have just put it on hold temporarily. I realised that although I really put some effort into learning the dates, information is still not stored and made accessible in a way I would like to. I find that rote learning takes too long and is too unreliable. There are quite a few dates that just don’t seem to stick, and other disappear again quickly despite my best efforts. Slightly frustrated, I decided to give the silly pictures a chance.

The major system is a way of translating numbers to words and then to pictures. It is based on the idea that our mind remembers pictures much more easily than abstract sequences of numbers, especially if they are linked to an emotion, i.e. they are funny, disgusting, scary etc. This system is used by people in memory championships, and people like this guy here ( he makes it obvious in his last calculation, starting at roughly 11:30 ).

So, how does it actually work? The Major system uses the phonetic alphabet to assign a consonant sound to every single digit number.

Number	letter	Memory help
0	s,z	zero starts with z
1	t,d	t looks much like a 1
2	n	has two legs down
3	m	has three legs down
4	r	last letter of four
5	l	L is the roman numeral for 50
6	sh,soft ch and g,  j , dg	mumbling six gives shix –> sound needed
7	k, hard c and g	k “includes” two sevens
8	f,v	script f resembles a 8
9	p,b	p is a mirror image 9
unassigned	vowels as well as w, h and y

Using this, one can turn every word into a number, and vice versa, by distributing the vowels so it makes sense. For example:

5 –>  the sound is an l –> now pad this to make "hall” or “hell”, “lee”, “low” etc.

32 –> the sounds are “m n” which we can pad to “man” “moon” “money” or “human”

5821 -> the sounds are “l f n t”, which we can combine to write “elephant” or alternatively, break it into two chunks to make “leaf net”

If I now want to remember one of these numbers in any context, say 32 is the number of my room in a hotel, then I can imagine the interior of said room with a giant moon hanging above the bed, like one of these things for babies. If I think of my room, I will think of the moon and therefore of the number 32. Of course, this is a fairly simple example but I am planning on exploiting this system for my history studies. If you want to play about with this more, have a look here: http://pinfruit.com/ This website will convert any number into words by chunking it for you and giving you a whole list of possibilities.

If I had to actually make up words on the spot, this would take forever. Therefore, I decided to follow the suggestion to learn a fixed set of words for the numbers 0-99. That way, I will hopefully end up with a coherent system which should also make it easier to interpret old pictures. I want to be able to think “moon” every time I hear 32 and immediately be able to interpret a moon as “32” without actually having to pay attention to the individual sounds. I have only got to roughly 50 so far, so you will have to wait for the next post to get the list.

I do have to admit that I am still a little dubious about this whole thing. I can see how this is great for memory championships but I’m not quite convinced yet that I will really get some use out of this in every day life.  Consider this an experiment if your average forgetful person ( = me ) can really significantly improve their memory with this, without going crazy half way. I will let you know.

Finding motivation

I had a look at my calendar yesterday and I realised that I have been out of university for three weeks already! Where does the time go? While it is great to have so much time to myself, I do find that I have a tendency to just fall into a slump and do nothing for weeks on end.That’s okay if I’m off for a limited amount of time but since this might end up being more of a long term arrangement I have been battling the laziness. Damn, it’ shard! There is always the vast expanse of the internet just round the corner, the temptation to just curl up in bed and sleep (and I can sleep a lot…) or the unlimited number of cheap terrible novels on amazon at an arms reach. But, I have been fighting back! Here are my strategies so far:

1. Keep a daily to do list – I write mine either the night before or first thing in the morning. Anything goes on there: Things I want to do, things I have to do and things I have been planning to do. Then I work of as much as I can. I don’t always finish it which is okay if something else got in the way. I tried making an actual schedule but found it too restricting so lists work better.

2. Don’t break the chain – I read about this on the internet somewhere. The concept is quite simple: I picked a task that I want to do every day and then I decided what constitutes a “unit”. As an example, one of my tasks is “craft” and I decided that I want to do at least one complete task a day. For example, cutting the shirt yarn was one days worth. Yesterday I got in a rush and just copied a pattern and traced it onto the new fabric. When I have completed the task for the day I make a large black cross. Over time, a chain of crosses built up and I’m not allowed to break the chain. Since I’m a sucker for crossing things off and because the calendars make a great visual reminder, this works really well for me. I deliberately keep my tasks very short as I want to be able to squeeze them in on busy days and I also find that often once I started I keep going anyway. When I’m not here I put a “V” for vacation and at some point I might have to use an “S” for sick so as to keep the chain going when external circumstances prevent me from completing the task. I currently have four tasks in total and that seems to be a good number but I might expand on it or change them around over time.

3. Write down ideas when I’m motivated-I find that when I am really busy I have the best ideas and the best motivation but when I actually have the time I don’t much feel like doing anything any more. So, while I was still revising, I wrote down my ideas and enthusiasm in letters to myself, dairy entries and lists of things to do. Now when I’m bored or just uninspired I can co back to these and pick up a little of my earlier energy.

4. Keep a blog-I’m not joking, writing this blog is a huge motivating factor for me. After all, if I spent three days in bed stuffing my face with chocolate and reading cheap romance novels ( one of my guilty pleasures ) I don’t have anything to write about.

So, that’s what I do to keep myself moving. How do you keep yourself motivated, especially when your day has no structure whatsoever?

Sometimes

fmgbain

Sometimes, when we laugh together and call each other silly names, I wish I could catch the moment in a jar. I want to keep it on my shelf, to open again when times are darker and when the lightness is gone. One twist of the lid, and it all comes back: the pointless jokes and funny faces, the happy feelings and the silliness. The tickling and chasing each other, the skipping and singing and smiling. I want to watch it chase the sadness away, the silence and the brooding, want to see it fill the room once more when laughter seems far away.

How research works

I was going to write a totally different post today but I wanted to share this instead. Today, I had my absolute very last lecture at this university ever and it so happened to be a revision lecture for General Relativity. Toby, the lecturer, gave us some advice that has really strung a chord with me.

Over the last few months, I have really been struggling with my self confidence when it comes to doing science. I get good results but I work very hard for them and I often feel like there will come a point when I just cannot compensate with working harder anymore. I feel like I'm too stupid to do "real" physics. This might have something to do with the fact that scientific papers and books are full of phrases like "obviously", "a brief calculation shows" or "it can be demonstrated". When I actually try to follow what is going on, the "brief calculation" can be several pages and weeks of pain. "Obviously" is often anything but obvious to me. This might have something to do with people forgetting very quickly all the things they didn't know. To be fair, I'd struggle to write a list of mathematical theorems I knew at high school. They might also be trying to make themselves look smarter. I don't know why but it happens all the time. On top of that, there is this odd mechanism that students who do little to no work but still somehow pass are seen as super intelligent. People like me though, who get very good results but work hard for them, are seen as merely hard-working and that's not a character trait mentioned often in the same sentence as "theoretical physicist". I somehow have this feeling that to be a successful physicist, one has to be super smart and always immediately understand everything, at least everything we are taught at this level.

Even though my project was a success, as far as the time limit allowed, I felt like I had somehow failed because I would often stare at my equations for hours and hours, write pages and pages only to throw it all away in the end. I eventually got where I wanted to be but the process was laborious, even though it said "obviously" in the paper (and to be fair, in hindsight, it was quite trivial).  I somehow felt like I wasn't up to the job.

So much for me and my self confidence issues. This is what Toby said today:

"When I say "trivial", what I really mean is "really obvious in hindsight, after having spent hours, weeks or even months shut in my room with lots of paper, trying and trying and trying until I wanted to bash my head against a wall" Because that's what we really do when we do research in theoretical physics. We bash our head against things a lot, stare at equations and throw bits of paper out of the window. And then we finally get to the end, look at the results and go "Well that was really quite obvious when you think about it this way. Let's go and do it again, except with something harder." It's always like that, it is really just a question of where you are in this process. I have already filed many things under trivial, that you still find incredibly hard, but I still feel like this most days. The only difference is that your problems right now look nasty but generally turn out to be okay. In real research, you will find that things look nasty and turn out to be even worse."

I could have kissed him. This was exactly what I needed to hear. If he, as a senior lecturer well on his way to becoming a professor, can work this way then so can I. Maybe I haven't been doing it wrong all along. Maybe I can become a "real" physicist after all.

Sometimes

Sometimes I want to write down all the things I think and feel and when I try, I manage two sentences and then it all jumbles together. So I post you these two sentences instead.

10 reasons I think I'm awesome

 Last weeks post got me thinking about what I actually like about myself. I thought I'd share the result with you to show that I'm not all insecurity and regret. So, a non exhaustive list of reasons I think I'm awesome:

1. I have a very strong ability to concentrate. When I really think about something (normally something mathematical), I can block out the world around me and just THINK. It doesn't always work but when it does, it's great.
   
   
2. I am a really fast reader and easily get through a 100 pages in an hours. Also, I can read forever. I used to spent nights reading 800 page books in one and was still able to recount the storyline afterwards.
   
   
3. I'm quite efficient when doing practical things such as organizing, planning, cleaning up the kitchen or getting everybody out the door. In the past, my friends have banned me from using the word “efficient” Apparently it was getting annoying ;)
   
   
4. I'm really quite good at improvised cooking. You know, the sort of “Oh, we have half a courgette, some tomato purée and an old shoe. Right, dinner.”
   
   
5. I'm really good at breaking a big problem into little chunks and then organising them in a sensible order so they can be easily tackled. I think this strongly links to 3 and 9.
   
   
6. I can eat whatever I want without gaining weight. Before you get too jealous: I'm also lactose intolerant so that means little cheese, little chocolate, little ice cream, little yoghurt, little cake etc
   
   
7. I have picked up enough of a British accent in only four years that many people are surprised to learn it isn't my mother tongue. 
   
   
8. I have a sense for “making things pretty”. Unfortunately this also comes with a desire to constantly do so but I'm learning to just ignore it most of the time. 
   
   
9. I know how to program and if I may say so myself, I'm fairly good at it. Clearly I find it easy to think like a computer.
   
   
10. I am easily excited by small things.

Sometimes

Sometimes, when I'm upset, my head makes up all these bad fights we could have. It makes my anger rage higher and higher until I feel like I'm going to explode, or pulls me down to deeper and deeper into sadness.  Last week, I heard somebody say “Don't feed your anger”. I will try. For us and for me.

Sometimes

 ♥ 

 Sometimes, when I walk across the Thames at night and see the city lights reflected in the water around me, when I can feel my dress swishing around my knees and the music from the saxophone player on the bridge mixes with the constant hum of voices, when the cool wind plays with my hair and I listen to the sound of my heels on the bridge, I feel like London belongs to me.

Last lecture

My last lecture at this university, number 26 of "Quantum Theory of Matter"

I just walked out of hearing the last lecture I will ever have at this university. Over the course of four years, I attended 35 lecture courses which add up to 720 ± 10 hours of lecture time. That is pretty exactly 30 days or one month. On top of that there were countless hours of lab, projects, classworks and tutorials plus of course the endless hours I put in, in my own time. It feels like I have closed a chapter in my book even though I'm not actually done with my degree yet. I have to write my masters thesis as well as sit a last set of exams.

There were courses I really enjoyed, such as "General Relativity" and "Dynamical Systems and Chaos". Others, such as an appalling course on Electronics, I absolutely hated. There were times, mostly early on a Monday or late on a Friday when I really didn't feel like it (and sometimes I didn't go) but there were others when I was really looking forward to my lectures and enjoyed every single one of them. Even if lectures aren't the best way to learn for me (I prefer books), they provided a framework, some motivation to get out of bed and an opportunity to ask questions. Some people advocate having people learn entirely from books using a reading list and while this would be possible, I don't like the sound of it. In the best case, the lecturer takes a textbook and supplements it with his own explanations and newer developments, clearing up confusion in the process. Of course that doesn't always happen and with some lecturers I seriously wish they had just stuck to some standard text and read it out.

The good news is that now, nothing more is going to be added to my plate. For the next 2.5 months, I am just going to work off what is already on there (which is plenty, trust me) until there is nothing left. It will be a stressful time, fumigating in may/june and, from experience, I won't enjoy it but I know I can do it. After that, the great freedom waits, with all it's free time and uncertainty