Beat Yesterday

By some pleasant random act of fate, I ended up switching my fitness trackers from my beloved Fitbit to a Garmin. While the Garmin by all means is awesome, I have a feeling it is meant for serious athletes among us. Most of the times I feel like my Garmin fitness tracker looks down upon me. It's like - "You are too unfit for me! Getup you lazy human, I am designed to be worn by active ones!" Doesn't help me with my inferiority complex.

Anyway, the one thing I like about it is the concept of beat yesterday! It doesn't set me ambitious impossible goals. The goals for the next day are based on what I did the previous day (or rather they use a smoothing factor of last several days!) This means that if I have had a particularly active week, then my challenge for next week is to live up to my previous week. In the same context, if I have been lazy for a while, Garmin steps down my challenges and just expects me to do marginally better.

This I feel is a very important life lesson. You have to work hard for everything in life. And consistency is rewarded more than random acts of hard-work followed by bouts of lazy days. Your goals, hobbies and ambitions can only be achieved if you consistently work towards them and just continuously aspire to beat yesterday!

 

Pseudo Carpenter

Last few weeks, I have had the pleasure of installing a lot of IKEA furniture. Tables, Chairs, Beds, Wardrobes, you name it and I tried my hand at assembling them.

IKEA furniture assembly is easy. I believe they have a bunch of monkeys in a room somewhere. And the monkeys have been trained to follow instructions. The assembly manual of every new piece of IKEA furniture is tested and quality controlled by the monkeys before it is released to the general public.

Assembling the furniture gives you a false sense of accomplishment. I pretended like I was a carpenter for a few days. In reality, all I did was follow the simplified instructions. Playing with a lot of LEGO blocks as a child also helps.

Anyway, IKEA deserves all the credit for making me feel happy! I have never ever been good at wood-work. The only time I had to do some remote wood work was in the first year of engineering. We had to make a T-joint using a block of wood. I think mine was the worst amongst my classmates. So now being able to assemble several pieces of furniture really gives me a high!