Ragnar Freyr is a print and web designer, educator and blogger working in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Goals and Habits
August 19 3 Comments
Goals. They say we should all have them clearly written on paper. In fact authors like Brian Tracy say that having clearly defined goals can help you achieve happiness and success faster and more effective. It’s essentially the law of attraction. You want something and if you you work at it, you will eventually get it.
Habits are a different thing. We all have our collection of good and bad habits. Habits are defined by what you do most of the time, all the time. Or like Wikipedia states:
Habits are routines of behavior that are repeated regularly, tend to occur subconsciously, without directly thinking consciously about them.
When you start to think about your habits consciously and in a critical way you soon see that some of them might be truly bad for you. A habit change is a hard thing to do and many people fail at it. The general advice people give about habit changes is to treat it like olives. Eat 21 and you’ll love them. Try a habit change for 30 days and you will change your ways.
I sat down the other day to write a few simple goals and desired habit changes for myself. Some would argue that I have too many goals going on at once but I think it’s good to write everything down and then prioritize. However, the list below is in no particular order. Goal experts tend to agree that sharing your goals with others will make you more likely to achieve them since you get the feeling that someone is following your progress. This is my attempt.
Do less
This might seem a strange goal for a 29 year old but I think it really has a ring to it. I want to slow down, do less and do the things I choose to do with greater enthusiasm and attention. I want to drop the things that don’t contribute to my core values and give more time and focus to things that really matter to me.
This means saying no more often, reducing commitments and simplifying work and past-time. Do less but do smart and make it count.
Stop drinking Pepsi or any other soda
I’ve been a Pepsi/Coca Cola addict for a very, very long time. For the last three years my average daily consumption of the stuff has been about 2 liters. I know, it’s insane! My goal is to drop it completely. So far it’s been going great. Only occasional setbacks when the real craving kicks in. I’ve found the joy of drinking water again and my body is thankful for it. I actually FEEL the change. I’m more energetic, more focused and don’t have to worry about my teeth turning into dust! This will also save me a bunch of money since soda is not the cheapest beverage you can buy in Iceland.
Stop eating candy
This one should be easy for me. In 2007 I stopped eating candy for a whole year. It was great and I felt good about the accomplishmeant. When I moved back to Iceland I really fell of the horse. The Icelandic candy is just so goooood. But now I’m going to do it again. No more candy unless it’s a real special occasion or a celebration of some sort.
Read more books
I really like books. I really like stories and useful information. I find it fun to read but I never give myself the time to do it. Other means of entertainment always prevail. I want to find more time to read both fiction and informational material. So far it has not been going so well. I still find other ways of passing my time. I play video games, I watch television shows, I read blogs.
Reach X amount in monthly salary
I’m happy to say that a week after I wrote this goal down I was offered a full time job at a start-up company here in Iceland. I accepted after spending the last four years freelancing and relying on an unstable income and the recent economic decline certainly played a big role in my decision. The full-time job brought me closer to my goal. Freelancing on the side will definitely allow me to reach my goal every month. (Even with my “Do less” goal in mind) It’s time to raise the bar again.
Pay consumer debts in full
Directly connected to my goal above. The stable income provides me with the tools to pay the rest of my consumer debts more easily. Becoming debt free is now my mission.
Wake up early and develope a morning routine
I can’t say it’s been a problem for me but making a habit of waking up early every day has been one of my dreams for a long time. I find that when I wake up early I get more done and work with a more focused mind. I percieve the days to be longer and more fulfilling. In connection to this goal I want to develope a good morning routine. My ideal routine would consist of waking up early, drinking a glass of water, going out for a jog, taking a shower, sorting my tasks for the day, making breakfast and preparing lunch to bring to work, commute to work.
Cook a home-made dinner 5-6 days of the week
This has already become a habit. Me and my wife cook almost every night, leaving Friday or Saturday for take-out or special dishes. We save a lot of money, develope our culinary skills and spend time together talking about our activities during the day. I really recommend it.
Start the habit of meditation
I’ve been reading alot about the benefits of meditation and I really want to give it a go. So far I’ve not made time for it in my day but that has to change. This is a part of slowing down, be mindful and enjoying and contemplating the now.
Start the habit of regular exercise
Same here. We all know the health benefits of regular exercise. When I was younger I used to practice competetive cross-country skiing. It’s one of the hardest sports around. I was in great shape. I quit in my teens and subsequently my body started to grow weaker. That, accompanied by a very sedentary lifestyle (I work in front of the computer all day) has really brought me out of shape. I’m suffering from growing back pains and I can’t walk my own stairs without getting tired. My goal is to start jogging regularly to get into shape before I reach my last goal. (See bottom)
Simplify
I’m a minimalist by heart. I love simple things. My goal is to simplify my life even more than it is right now. By being a minimalist in every way you essentially free your mind of clutter. I’m going to simplify my home (decluttering), simplify work, finances, digital file management and many other things.
Aquire a mountain bike
I’ve become obsessed with mountain biking without even having a bike. I hang on forums, watch videos and view images. I really want a good mountain bike. But rather than going out right away and buying it I am going to save up for it and buy a really good one. Mountain biking combines many of my goals and hobbies in one. But first and foremost it’s exercise and it’s nature.
And that’s it. My current goals and desired habits.
I’d love to stay and chat but…
August 10 No Comments
Things have been crazy lately. Just after I started at gogoyoko, freelance work started pouring in. Especially projects I had promised to do a long time ago. I’ve been working almost non-stop 12-14 hours a day for the last two weeks. I can’t complain though. It’s good work for nice clients and I still have a lot of energy left. Designing has never been this fun!
If that wasn’t enough I am also planning my first ever photography exhibition for the annual Menningarnótt (e. Culture Night) in Reykjavík. Menningarnótt will be taking place at 22nd of August and my show will be hosted by Kron on Laugavegur 48. The show is called Á bak við Reykjavík and consists of photographs of the seldomly seen parts of the city where Icelandic architecture and vernacularism meet eye to eye.
The show is supported by Visit Reykjavík and Landsbankinn.
You are all invited of course.
At Work
July 30 1 Comment
Good news. I’ve started working as a web designer at gogoyoko a new social networking music website and an online music store. So far I’ve been working on User Interface mockups for various elements of the product, trying to improve upon the good work that has already been done.
I am very excited about working at gogoyoko. The team consists of highly professinal people with a burning interest in music and their work. For more information about what’s happening at gogoyoko check out the blog.
Also watch the gogoyoko promotional video:
Taming the beast
July 21 1 Comment
In my last post I wrote about making the switch from Safari to Firefox and how it affected the graphic designer in me. The post gathered quite a lot of site visits and a few comments.
I was happily surprised to discover that one of the commenter was Asa Dotzler a community coordinator for Firefox marketing projects. Wow… someone from Mozilla actually commented on my blog, giving me advice on how to make Firefox look more like Safari. Pretty neat eh?
Asa pointed me to the GrApple themes for Firefox. (Thanks Asa) The theme makes the Firefox user interface look almost identical to Safari. A fantastic solution for me and makes me like the open source browser even more. Try it out!
The beauty and the beast
July 16 7 Comments
While the Icelandic government votes on whether Iceland should apply for EU membership I am trying to cast a vote between two Mac Os X browsers; Safari and Firefox.
I’ve been a Safari user ever since Leopard came out but recently, with the launch of Safari 4, we’ve not had such a good time together. Safari keeps crashing on me for no apparent reason, it loads slower than normally and doesn’t seem to adequately render many sites I frequent.
So with the launch of Firefox 3.5 I started looking over the fence to see if the grass was greener. Firefox 3.5 brings many new features and promises faster browsing. Initial memory tests showed that Firefox is lighter than Safari on my system, taking 40mb less of virtual memory. After using Firefox for a while it seems much more stable than Safari, loading faster and rendering websites at a great speed. So why has it been so hard for me to switch?
I’ll tell you why! I’m a graphic designer. The look and the user interface means a lot to me. Safari just looks so damn good compared to Firefox. Safari is the beauty while Firefox is the beast. A roaring beast mind you but not a good looking one. Now I know that Firefox has the ability to be themed. Currently though most old themes don’t work with the new browser and the ones that do aren’t nearly as compact as the default one. Lets take a better look.
Buttons
The Safari buttons are very compact and stylized while the Firefox buttons are big and chunky and take up a lot of unwanted space. They align strangely with the bullets above them and that small dark arrow that lets you access recent websites is just not needed or could be incorporated into the button in my opinion. What Safari does in the new version of the browser is to include the Reload and Stop buttons into the Navigation bar which I think is really clever. Take a close look at the Firefox’s default buttons anti-aliasing. It’s not pretty.
Navigation bar
The same goes for the Navigation bar. Safari just looks a lot better. The plus button on the left is for adding bookmarks. Firefox uses the blue star and the drop down arrow on the far right which is similar to the Reload and Stop approach Safari uses. I prefer it the way Safari does it. I also really dislike the way Firefox treats favicons, putting them in a button-like element that holds limited purpose.
Search bar
Why do you need to use the site’s favicon Firefox? Why? Google’s favicon is as ugly as their logo. I don’t want that color smudge polluting my web experience all day. Give me a preference to switch it off. You guys should just copy Safari on this one. It’s much neater and cleaner.
Bookmark bar
Ok I admit this is nitpicking but the details in the difference between the bookmark bars have me wanting to use Safari. The Safari bookmark bar is much more integrated into the whole UI. The text blends better into the background. The Firefox bookmark bar’s gradient really irks me because it separates the bar from the other UI elements.
Tabs
And lastly the tabs. Again, what’s with the friggin’ favicon love Firefox? Loose them or give me a preference to switch them off. They clutter up the whole thing. Safari’s tabs are minimal and sweet. The best part about them is that the Close button doesn’t appear unless you hover over them. Genius! In Firefox they are always visible, only adding to the clutter. They are also on the wrong side in my opinion. Almost everything in the whole Mac OS X system is closed on the left side of the window. It is taking me a while to get used to closing tabs on the right side, even though the button is always visible.
Despite having all these things that I don’t like about the Firefox UI I made the switch today after three Safari crashes. I’ll just have to make do until someone (maybe I’ll look into that myself) designs a super minimal and compact theme for Firefox that integrates well with Mac Os X.
No Impact Man
July 15 2 Comments
No Impact Man follows Colin Beavan and his family during their year-long experiment to have zero impact on the environment. The rules of the experiment included producing no trash save for compost, purchasing no goods except for food grown within a 250-mile radius, using no carbon-based transportation, and using no paper products. Yes, that includes toilet paper.
Check out Colin’s blog at: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/
Major Lazer
July 15 No Comments
I’ve been listening a lot to Major Lazer’s debut LP named Guns Don’t Kill People – Lazers Do featuring such vocalists as Santigold and Nina Sky. The album is described as digital reggae and dancehall from Mars in the future! I think I can safely say that it’s the album of the summer. It just reeks of crazy parties and sick soundsystems and gets me rockin’ every time.
According to Wikipedia Major Lazer is:
a fictional cartoon character, who according to press releases fought as a Jamaican commando who lost his arm in a secret zombie war in 1984. He fights vampires and various monsters, parties hard, and has a rocket powered skateboard.
However this fictional commando doesn’t actually producde the music. The guys behind Major Lazer call themselves Diplo and Switch and are known for producing artists like M.I.A and Santigold.
Pon de Floor feat. Vybz Kartel
Can’t Stop Now feat. Mr. Vegas & Jovi Rockwell
My social media landscape
July 15 4 Comments
I’m a webrat. I literally live on the internet. I’ve signed up for more web 2.0/social media services than I can remember. I love finding new things and new ways to interact and share stuff online. But even though I’ve signed up for a bunch there are only a few that I use on daily basis. Lets take a look shall we?
Facebook
Oh Facebook. How I love/hate thee. It’s almost mandatory to be there these days. It’s a nice tool to stay in contact with friends and relatives and an excellent one to advertise events. But I’m sure you know all about it.
Flickr
I’ve been on Flickr for at least three years, sharing photos, work and images. It’s hands down the best image and photo hosting out there. The best part is that it’s dirt cheap, only $25 a year for a pro account. The only thing I’d wish for is the ability to allow public comments on your account.
twitter
I signed up on twitter in February 2007 and then deleted my account after not quite “getting it”. Then I signed up again in 2008 and got the good twitter folks to restore my username. It’s really simple. You have 140 characters. Go wild! After gaining new contacts and exploring the possibilities of the service I’ve come to cherish it and use it almost every day.
tumblr
Tumblr is a kind of micro bloggin service too but allows for a wider use of media and longer posts. It has become very popular for photo and image blogs. For a while it was my only form of blog where I would post quotes, videos and funny images but not much content. In the future I will use tumblr as a place where I share inspiration and other images.
LinkedIn
I haven’t spent much time on LinkedIn to be honest. I do however recognize the potential the tool has for making new contacts and maintaining professional relationships with clients, colleagues and co workers. Note to self: Make more use of LinkedIn.
Delicious
The Delicious social bookmarking service saved my life. Up until I found Delicious I was using the browsers to bookmark every site I wanted to keep the URL of. Needless to say it became a big chunk of steaming mess even though I tried applying a sort of GTD process to the whole thing. Enter Delicious, it jus makes everything much easier and with proper tagging you will never lose a link to an important website again.
Behance
Behance is a place where you can showcase your work in a social media environment. You can jon circles, comment, give ratings, interact and much more. A great place for making new, like-minded contacts. I just have to be more active there.
vimeo
I love Vimeo. It’s just so smooth and tasty and the video quality is great. I plan on buying myself a digital camera that can record HD videos and do some experiments. It will be a while but I plan on it. The 6 videos I have there now are all from my Canon SD1000 camera that recently got stolen on my trip to Barcelona.
YouTube
Even though I have an account there with few cell phone videos I don’t really use YouTube anymore. I much prefer Vimeo for hosting video. The only exception is when I want to host gaming videos. YouTube allows it, Vimeo doesn’t.
last.fm
I, like most other human beings, love listening to music. Last.fm, accompanied by plugins or the amazing CoverSutra (which I use) is a great tool for sharing your playlist and analyzing your music habits. Apparently múm and The Cinematic Orchestra are competing for the top spot as my all time most played bands.
BoxedUp
I’ve been using BoxUp for a while as my universal material wishlist. The idea is to hold a list of my material “wants” and maybe, just maybe publish it on my social networks for upcoming birthdays. haha! I’ve been trying to find a similar service that offers better usability and interface. If you have a suggestions please comment below.
iusethis
Haven’t updated this list in a while but thought I would include it here. Iusethis is mostly a service that lets you know about new and hot applications and important software updates. The social aspect of it lets you pick your applications and see how popular it is. Then there are comments and the usual stuff.
gogoyoko
I can’t seem to link to my profile yet as this website is still in beta. I am very excited about this project. gogoyoko, which opened in Iceland last week, is a social music marketplace where music fans can buy directly from the artists. Artists set the price for their music and get 100% of the sales profit and even earn share of the site’s advertising revenue.
Google
Yep. What’s more official than a Google profile? Doesn’t do much but promises to help me get found on the internet. When searching Google I have a problem finding my own profile. Maybe I’m just daft! I wonder how many page visits it gets.
And there you have it. My social media landscape.