I have always been fairly competitive and enjoyed pushing myself.
From sports at a young age to chemistry and computer science in university I don’t generally shy away from the difficult.
I am also lazy however and don’t like to exert myself unnecessarily.
A classic case of preferring to work smart over hard.
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It has only been in the past few years that I have really begun to make a study of performance optimization.
There were a few books on studying better that I read before that, but it was never a large focus in life until recently.
Like many people who go down this road I got my start with Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour series.
His results first approach drew me in quickly and I drew some parallels between what he was suggesting and what I already did.
Specifically what I did with games.
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I have long been an avid gamer, board games, video games, role-playing games and any other type of game I can get my hands on.
The structured systems have always fascinated me and I am the sort of player (that some dislike) who spends a large amount of time thinking about the games and their systems.
Figuring out how they interact and seeing if any interactions I can find break the system and provide easier or unintended paths to victory.
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It was not until I saw his approach to applying the same sort of deconstruction to challenges in life that the two worlds connected.
I had always treated games as something separate living in their own space but that is no longer the case.
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Over the last few years I have read dozens of books on everything including business, learning, fitness, health (physical and mental), focus, discipline and scheduling.
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Like with games however I have run into another problem.
Especially with games that are not online my academic interest sort of consumes all the time I spend on the pursuit.
Some of the information I have been able to implement but it has not been a large portion.
I am aiming to change that.
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My plan is to work to create tools to help facilitate the implementation of the various techniques that I have read about and record my success (or failures) at the implementations themselves.
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As this is my first blog post it is a pretty exciting time, anyone who either reads this near its posting, or who reads this far back (I am committing to one post a week) you have my thanks.
