March 2022 - Asif Rehmani

Reduce the clutter to clear your mind

Have you ever noticed that you can think clearly when present in some spaces compared to others? Context really matters.

There’s a correlation of how clear your mind is to how clear (and clutter free) your environment is.

There’s a story that Bill Gates Sr. was once sitting down with his son Bill Gates Jr. as well as Warren Buffett and he asked them both to write one single word that has made them both successful. They both wrote down the exact same thing: Focus

It’s not a coincidence that people who are focused and clear minded are the ones who are the most successful in this world.

Many of us struggle to attain that focus because of the clutter in our minds. Now I’m not saying that by decluttering our environment, you will automatically become laser focused. However, I am 100% confident that it will help tremendously and it’s something that is very much in our control.

The challenge is of course that we live in a very materialistic society. Buying stuff has become an activity for many. A lot of the stuff we buy is not even out of necessity. We buy just because we need something to do. And because it gives us a temporary spike of pleasure that feels good in the moment.

Obviously the more we buy the more stuff we have the more cluttered our environment gets and the less clear and focused our minds get. It’s a vicious circle that is hard to break.

Let’s at least start with the awareness that if we want to be focused and achieve our goals, we can take the simple actionable step of removing some clutter to start clearing our minds.

What is gaming and why is everyone going so crazy for it?

The gaming industry revenue is now dwarfing the revenue that major motion pictures are making. From a couple of hundred million gamers 10 years ago to now it’s almost 3 billion gaming users in the world.

Microsoft purchased Activision for $68 billion dollars.

Sony is buying Bungie for about $4 billion dollars.

What the heck is going on? Why are these companies making such big bets on gaming outfits?

I believe Gamers will be the ones calling the shots in the 2030s and beyond. Just like nerds made their mark on the world and became cool in the 1980s and ’90s.

Keep in mind that when I say gamers I don’t mean the teenage kid sitting on the couch eating Cheetos and playing Xbox.

Gaming is much more than just Madden football, Halo or Pac-Man.

Gaming is experiences you have together with friends, family and even coworkers. Imagine going to axe throwing but doing it virtually in the metaverse where you have walked in with a bunch of friends into this store in metaverse but your friends are from all over the world one is from China another from India third from Germany and one from Canada and you are the United States.

Or to simplify it, just chilling at home and watching a Sunday football playoff game virtually with a dozen of your friends from around the world. That’s gaming as well.

Currently I see Meta (formerly Facebook), Microsoft, Sony and a few other players making some big bets in the gaming industry. They see the vision. They see the future. My prediction is that other companies will start seeing the same vision as well once they see the realization of benefits and profits that these companies will be accruing.

It’s a wonderful future to look forward to where you can be anywhere and be anyone in the metaverse.

Of course, this wonderful future does not come with drawbacks and challenges that we will have to face just like any other advances in technology that have come before it in the past.

My biggest fear: I hope we don’t all become couch potatoes where we wake up in the morning, put on our virtual reality gear, spend the whole day in a virtual world that that gives us whatever reality we want, momentarily satisfying us for the day and then we turn in for the night to repeat the same thing over again the next day. That future would not be good for mankind.

If we want to avail this upcoming opportunity of the metaverse in a way that propels mankind forward, we will have to be disciplined about how we make the best use of the new world instead of becoming slaves to it.

Sacrifice pleasure for happiness

What do you really want in life? Do you want happiness that’s long-lasting or do you want momentary pleasure?

The answer is simple of course: Both right ☺️

Let’s talk about the sources of each – pleasure and happiness.

You get pleasure when endorphins are rushing through your brain and giving you that momentary feel of satisfaction. That type of satisfaction occurs when you just won a race, ate a piece of delicious cake, won the Lotto, had great sex, or a bunch of equivalent things which give you a feeling of satisfaction in the moment.

The challenge with most of us is that we confuse these spikes of pleasure with happiness.

Happiness vs Pleasure

Figure: The way I think about Pleasure vs Happiness

So what’s true happiness and how do you attain that?

Happiness is harder to come by, requires more investment of time and energy and patience. Happiness also sometimes comes with momentary pain as you try to achieve that state of happiness.

Because of all these obstacles, many of us don’t even bother trying to work at it. It’s just too hard. And many times it’s not even guaranteed that you’ll achieve happiness at all that work. While pleasure, even though it’s momentary, it’s guaranteed.

So that begs the question… Is the pursuit of happiness worth it?

Why not just have many spikes of pleasure along your life which is definitely much easier to attain rather than pursuing happiness which is harder and not always guaranteed?

That’s a very good question indeed.

Let’s look closely at the problem with pleasure.

Pleasure is temporary of course but the bigger problem is that once that sense of pleasure is gone, it drops you right back to the state where you started. Sometimes even lower because of the expectation you had that it was going to last. And when it doesn’t last that long and the euphoria fades away, you have that feeling of dissatisfaction which stays with you longer.

Happiness on the other hand is incremental and sometimes exponential depending on how much you invest in it. Happiness builds on top of the previous state you were in.

But once again, the challenge with happiness: it takes work and intention. And that’s the reason that most people opt for quick pleasure instead of pursuits of long-term happiness.

I personally think there’s room for both. Sometimes you just want a quick hit of pleasure and that’s okay. As long as we don’t get addicted to those spikes of pleasure.

I truly believe that if we want our lives to be worth it long term, we should incrementally be investing in our happiness. And sometimes that investment requires payment in the form of sacrifice of momentary pleasure.