July 18, 2006

  • Radar Graphs and Eigenvectors

    I’m trying to figure out why I’m often kind of blah and tired these days.  So this weekend I did some deep thinking and came up with four adjectives that should guide all of my activities:

    1. Fun
    2. Restful
    3. Inspiring
    4. Productive

    Perhaps these are the eigenvectors of my life?  I decided to try plotting some of my recent activities measured on those axes.  After a few minutes, I drew up an appropriate scale:

    Then I rated about a dozen of my current and past activities along the four vectors to see how they measured up.  The top one: spontaneous late-night counseling, at a total of +8 above baseline.  The bottom one: bad church services, coming in at -6, barely beating out opera at -5.  Sleep came in at +2 (Baseline for everything except Good for rest).

    Here is a radar graph of a few middle-of-the-road activities.  I guess I could have predicted the conclusion:

Comments (12)

  • how can something be inspiring and not fun? to me, at least inspiring things are a subset of fun things.

  • I think I’m having a little trouble understanding the chart bc it appears that you have WoW as being a 3 in productivity, which kind of confuses me since I think of video games as negative in productivity, which is why they are so fun and restful, but maybe that’s bc I tend to play a lot longer than I’m supposed to (just 15 more min… ok, just 15 more min… etc.)

  • That is just wrong!!!  WRONG!!! lol…  And I agree w/ altoz partially anyway.

  • Only you would use eigenvectors in reference to fun.

  • SNL is watching Saturday Night Live?

  • Oops, I should clarify: a 3 is baseline, meaning 0, because negative numbers are hard to render on area charts. 2 in Productivity would mean I’m being negatively productive, like if I have a temper tantrum and go crash my car. Or doing something that puts me into such a bad mood that I get physically ill.

    In general things that are inspiring are “fun” to some extent. But I think of inspiring as more spiritual, and fun as more carnal or physical. Unrestrained laughter is fun. Reading about IJM rescue workers is inspiring.

    SNL was the “Adam Sandler – Best of SNL” that June and I rented, unfortunately.

  • Cooking?…. It’s cathartic, so it’s restful. It can be creative, so it’s can be inspiring. And you eat the product, so it’s productive. And to increase the fun, try being “a naked chef.” That would totally eigen those vectors off the charts! Just please only do it in the privacy of your own loft and with only June present!…

    Seriously, try taking a cooking class with June at the Culinary institute in Cambridge. Been wanting to try one of those classes…. once I have income to dispose actually!

  • oh ok, i thought that’s what it meant. but now i have another question. what if you can do two activities at once? is it additive or is it considered one activity? for example, you have bad church services at -6 and sleep at +2, but if you do both at the same time, would it be a -4 or i’m thinking it could it be higher since if you sleep at a bad church service, that could actually be productive since you won’t have to sleep later on and use that time instead to do something productive… so i would consider that a 0 (slightly positive on productivity and restful but slightly negative on inspiring and fun)… hmmm….

  • dtlee29 — but what if you sleep badly at a bad church service? then productivity may decrease because you get a crick in your neck and then can’t sleep well at night! =P

  • Get a stationary bike, hook it up to a generator to power up your computer so when you play WoW you’ll get some
    exercise!

  • hmmm… bad sleep at a bad church service – i think that would be off-the-chart negative with no possible redeeming qualities. so then the question becomes do you take a chance of taking a nap in a bad church service where, with good sleep, you can improve from a -6 to a 0; but with bad sleep, you go from a -6 to the bottom? my theory would be that if you’re really tired, then don’t fight the sleep, but if you’re not that tired, then just suffer through it. just a thought though, haha

  • hey ed. try swimming! it’s a lot more fun than running. dolphins are happy and spritely mammals for a reason

    for learning proper technique so swimming isn’t stressful i recommend Total Immersion.

    http://www.totalimmersion.net/

    cheers

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