Results

The hive mind

August 25, 2021

Few working scientists can give a ground-up explanation of the phenomenon they study; they rely on information and techniques borrowed from other scientists. Knowledge and the virtues of the scientific orientation live far more in the community than the individual. When we talk of a “scientific community,” we are pointing to something critical: that advanced science is a social enterprise, characterized by an intricate division of cognitive labor. Individual scientists, no less than the quacks, can be famously bull-headed, overly enamored of pet theories, dismissive of new evidence, and heedless of their fallibility. (Hence Max Planck’s observation that science advances one funeral at a time.) But as a community endeavor, it is beautifully self-correcting.

Beautifully organized, however, it is not. Seen up close, the scientific community—with its muddled peer-review process, badly written journal articles, subtly contemptuous letters to the editor, overtly contemptuous subreddit threads, and pompous pronouncements of the academy— looks like a rickety vehicle for getting to truth. Yet the hive mind swarms ever forward. It now advances knowledge in almost every realm of existence—even the humanities, where neuroscience and computerization are shaping understanding of everything from free will to how art and literature have evolved over time.

~ Atul Gawande from, Atul Gawande and the Mistrust of Science

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I can’t add to that. I only wanted to be sure that others see it too.

Meanwhile, I never bothered to read Gawande’s hit book, The Checklist Manifesto. (To be candid, bordering on obnoxious: Time is limited, and I don’t need to seek more information about processes. I’ve got that sorted.) But it has hovered in my awareness none the less. Recently, two unrelated sources gave over-the-top praise for Gawande’s newer book, Being Mortal. On those recommendations alone it’s now in my reading queue. I’ve cracked it open, and done the preliminary reading… Have you read it? Do you have any thoughts on it?

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Be the hornet?

March 18, 2021

Is it better to be the fly on the wall, or the hornet in the room?

I variously categorize conversations on a spectrum from formal to casual. Today I want to talk about conversations that fall in the middle. At the formal end would be police interrogations and then—perhaps—live, antagonistic interviews of politicians. At the casual end would be pillow-talk and long-term friends around a campfire with their preferred beverages. In the middle is fertile ground for great conversations.

So what exactly is in the middle? Therein lie conversations built on a shared intention: Two people who want to resolve a difference, who want to co-create something new from their individual experiences, or who are simply excited about taking a leap into the unknown experience that is a good conversation. It’s that third one which really calls to me these days.

The leap

I’ve now done enough recorded conversations to say two things:

I used to think I was doing interviews. In fact, I began using a process and format intentionally meant to create interviews; I showed up with things I was interested in and I wanted to learn more about from my partner. I soon discovered that when we veered away from the formal-end of the conversation spectrum, (away from the “interview” I had intended to create,) into the more middle-area of simply good conversation, that was when I most enjoyed the experience. My conversation partners clearly enjoyed it more, and the listeners did too. (“hmmmmm… maybe I am onto something here?” )

The first thing I have to say is that the form of the created artifact follows from the process.

If I use a process intended to create formal conversations, that’s what I’ll get, (more or less.) If I use a process intended to create more casual conversations, then I get that, (more or less.) The insight is that the process for creating casual conversation is not itself casual. The process is specific, rigorous, and frankly exhausting. It’s exhausting because I want to execute the process in order to create the best possible conversation, and I want to experience that conversation. That’s in contrast to my conversation partner who is only attempting to do the latter because they’re only aware of their desire to experience the conversation. They’re not aware of the process, and they probably shouldn’t be aware.

Each conversation—each performance, since I’m today talking about when we are recording—is better if we’re comfortable going just a bit farther than we might normally. This is where the process pays off. Everything I’ve done in preparation, and everything I do during the conversation, from the obvious to the subtle to the outright manipulative, is in service of creating the best space for that conversation.

The second thing I have to say is that to create good, casual conversations I have to help my partner leap.

Be the hornet?

I recently listened to Jesse Thorn’s interview of Werner Herzog for The Turnaround. If you’ve read this far, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t enjoy listening to that ~35 minutes of Thorn and Herzog.

In the conversations that I’m currently interested in creating and recording I simply cannot be the fly on the wall. I have to literally sit down with my conversation partner. But there’s an enormous range of engagement that I can vary. (More realistically I can only try to control this, as I’m always balancing the observer-process and the participant-creation experiences.) In my first recorded conversations there quickly became far too much of me performing, (and I’ll leave it at that for today.) Then followed me reigning myself in too far, then some relaxing back towards more of me, and currently I find that I like the amount of me that appears in the conversations.

After listening to Herzog’s thoughts on documentary film-making, (but he talks about a lot more than that in the podcast,) I now see that I need to work on being the active hornet in the room. This is the dimension where I actively lead the conversation—not upstage my partner, but actively lead in the way that two intimate dance partners have a leader, (and, yes, who is leading can change at any moment.)

I need to more often be the hornet. I need to more often suggest simply by my presence that a sting might be imminent. Then if they decline to leap, maybe, sting just a little.

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Barely noticeable

November 7, 2020

The authors note that a core resource of the digital economy is the data produced by users of services like Facebook and Google, which can then be used to train machine learning algorithms to do valuable things like precisely targeting advertisements or more accurately processing natural language. The current market treats data as capital: the “natural exhaust from consumption to be collected by firms” for use in training their AI-driven golden gooses. Lanier and company suggest an alternative: data as labor. Put simply, if a major platform monopoly wants your data to help build a multi-billion dollar empire, they must pay you for it. Offering a free service in return is not enough.

~ Cal Newport from, On Seriously Rethinking the Digital Economy – Cal Newport

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Well, that would change everything.

Imagine I changed the sidewalk in front of my house to have plates that moved slightly as one walks across it. I’ve rigged the plates to absorb some of the motion created during walking to generate electricity to offset my electric bill. Let’s assume further that the movement of the plates is barely noticeable. Perhaps something seems a bit “off” when you walk past my house, but nothing bad happens to you; you don’t fall and you don’t get tired, but you do work just a little harder when walking past my house.

What happens when we scale up that “harmless” little modification to include everyone, walking everywhere?

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Value giveaway

October 14, 2020

Fewer are aware that the PC wasn’t IBM’s only internal-politics-driven value giveaway; one of the most important software applications on those mainframes was IBM’s Information Management System (IMS). This was a hierarchical database, and let me pause for a necessary caveat: for those that don’t understand databases, I’ll try to simplify the following explanation as much as possible, and for those that do, I’m sorry for bastardizing this overview!

~ Ben Thompson from, Oracle’s Cloudy Future – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

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And, today this web site is a tech blog.

I’ve read, (technically I am in the process of reading,) everything Thompson has written. I skimmed through this long article since it wasn’t news to me. However, if you take about 10 minutes to read this, you’ll know more about Databases and the Big Kids who made the things which became the things you now use every day, than pretty much everyone else on the planet.

/techblog

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Wherever I go

August 23, 2020

Your freedom will not come from trying to ignore all the “stuff” or by trying to complete everything—it requires truly detaching from it.

~ David Allen from, GTD and stress – Getting Things Done®

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Detaching from all the stuff is a linchpin behavior for me. Wherever I go, there I find myself; if I want to not be swept away by all the stuff on my mind I have found exactly four things which work:

  1. Sleeping — This however is cheating. This is being unconscious and is simply a form of escape. Depending on what’s on my mind, and how poorly I’ve physically set myself up, (alcohol, caffeine, food, etc.,) sleep may even not be an option.
  2. Distraction — Visual entertainment switches off my brain. Movies, streaming TV, etc.. 100% waste of my life… but it’s an escape which does work.
  3. Focus — I can sweep away the crush of things on my mind if I’m sufficiently focused. Rock climbing, (not just the time literally climbing, but the entire day and experience of it,) is great for this. Lots of other activities indoor, (reading in various mediums and writing,) and outdoor, (walking and biking for example.) This is in fact, still a form of escape from the things on my mind.
  4. Capture and process — This is the only thing I’ve found which works for me. To be clear, a single idea had in a flash might require two full waking-hours days of capture and processing for me to fully flesh out the idea. If there’s even the slightest nook or cranny left unexplored, my broken mind will snag on that like a nick in a fingernail. Harmless, but very very repetitive redundant and repetitive.

I really hope you have no idea what I’m talking about here. If you do, I offer my sincere condolences.

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Open loops

August 15, 2020

Jot down every loop that opens; whether it comes via email, or a phone call, or a Zoom meeting, or Slack. Because these loops might emerge rapidly, use a minimalist tool with incredibly low friction. I recommended a simple plain text file on your computer in which you can record incoming obligations at the speed of typing (a strategy I elaborate in this vintage post).

Then, at the beginning of each day, before the next onslaught begins, process these tasks into your permanent system. In doing so, as David Allen recommends, clarify them: what exactly is the “next action” this task requires? Stare at this collection before getting started with your work.

~ Cal Newport from, On Confronting the Productivity Dragon (take 2) – Cal Newport

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This two part process is the backbone of how I get things done. When I find I have too many ideas rattling in my head it’s time to do a bunch of “capture.” One’s mind is for having ideas not for holding them. I prefer to write things down rather than using a digital device. Yes, my phone [at least] is very often at hand—but I’m a digital import, not a native, so thumb-typing is torture.

Everyone agrees that capturing everything—whether digital or analog, notes, meeting minutes, thoughts, doodles, lists, everything… Capturing everything is important and useful.

But almost everyone has not fully apprehended that second part: Process that collection from yesterday. Every day review all the “captured” stuff and brutally assess it. Can I just ignore it/cross it off as done? Can I put that onto some other list (groceries, errands, etc.)? Why did I capture this? …is it a dream, a flaming urgency, something I want to think more about?

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On podcasting

March 31, 2020

The short version of this story is simply: I’m simply curious. I try things. I make mistakes. I ask questions.

My podcasting journey began with the Movers Mindset project, which grew from conversations I started having as part of my personal journey rediscovering movement. Started in 2015, at first it was just a web site that shared others’ writing. But as I travelled, I kept finding myself in cool conversations until one day someone said, “you should have recorded that. I’d listen to that podcast.” Excited, but with no clue how much work it would be, I kicked off the Movers Mindset podcast at the start of 2017. For the first dozen episodes I did far too much of the work myself, until I wised up and started finding a few incredible people to share my new passion.

By this point I was devouring anything I could about interviewing. I smashed through thousands of podcast episodes in the process of wondering, “how does everyone else do it?” Podcasts, books, online courses… Everywhere I turned I found something new to work on in my own journey.

In the fall of 2018 I had about 30 interviews published on the podcast. I was getting comfortable travelling by plane, train and automobile, being invited into people’s lives to capture the Movers Mindset interviews. I was invited to the North American Art of Retreat, a Parkour leadership retreat, in the Cascade mountains outside of Seattle. There I did a series of interviews with the event’s presenters and organizers, and handed those recordings off for Art of Retreat to create their own podcast.

When 2019 rolled around, on a whim, I jumped into an Akimbo course called The Podcast Fellowship. I wanted to search for unknown-unknowns, to rethink everything I had done so far, and much about the Movers Mindset podcast changed in this period. To my surprise, I was invited back to be part of a small group of alumni who assist the coaches for the 4th, (and then the 5th, and 6th) running of the course. It’s mind-bogglingly inspiring and energizing to hang out daily with hundreds of people who share your passion. I even tried to summarize the fun of it in The Journey.

Meanwhile, the Movers Mindset episode numbers kept climbing and I’ve been branching out to interview more challenging guests; challenging for me as I’m forced to converse and discuss topics I know less and less about, but which none the less intrigue me endlessly. In the fall of 2019, this time with help from some of the Movers Mindset team, I was invited back to Art of Retreat. There, we did a second series of interviews for Art of Retreat’s podcast.

If you want to see a more up-to-date listing of what I’ve done in the podcasting space, see my Podchaser creator page.

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Movers Mindset Three Words

November 12, 2019

This essay is also presented as episode Craig Constantine: Discovery, reflection, and efficacy of the Movers Mindset podcast.

In each of the Movers Mindset podcast episodes, I ask guests to pick three words to describe their practice. Each guest’s choice has turned out to be a much more interesting and intriguing part of the conversation than we had initially anticipated.

The word practice goes beyond movement and often evokes broader images and ideas that reflect an approach to life. The idea that parkour and movement techniques in general are more than just physical has always been behind Movers Mindset. This is why I focus on ideas and reflection, for example, rather than on flashy videos of daring movement. The deeper dive into the mindset of movers is where the real magic happens.

That’s why I decided to do some introspection and pick three words that describe my practice. It was a challenge because reducing your practice to three words can seem like you are saying that the practice is nothing more than these three words, so you try to pick broad, powerful words to make sure you cover everything. Really, however, when you pick words that are too broad and too sweeping, you wind up not really saying anything specific that is unique to you. On the other hand, if you try to pick overly specific words, they may describe only one tiny part of your practice and give the impression that the scope of your focus is too narrow.

Picking three words is a challenge that I give to our guests, so it’s fair that I do it too. I found that capturing the essence of my practice in three words required a lot of introspection, and the act of choosing three words wound up being empowering. By going through the process, I now understand my practice more explicitly and am better prepared to describe it to other people. It’s not that I did not know the path I was following before, but now the path is clearer. It is easier to determine if a new project is consistent with my practice and vision, and this helps guide my choices in the overall direction of Movers Mindset. In general, I found the exercise to be challenging and highly worthwhile.  If you want the extra boost yourself, picking three words to describe your own practice is a good way to get started. It is a great way to discover things about yourself and about your relationship to the world.

This leads me to the first word: discovery. I wanted a word that involved starting with reality, with what we know about the world and about ourselves. I rejected observation because it is not active enough.  It has connotations of just sitting back and watching, listening, and taking the world in through your senses, but in a passive way. I also did not want a word like imagination or invention as my starting point, because these involve creating things. 

Generations ago when Benjamin Franklin confronted that fearsomely powerful storm driven on by his even more powerful desire to know—a desire that pushed him beyond the limits of anything humans had ever done—he was driven by the urge to discover, the urge to take action to learn what it was and what made it work. Franklin discovered that lightning was a form of electricity, but Edison invented the lightbulb. Discovery always comes first. Franklin pushed past the millennia of fear, the millennia of cowering primitive people who saw lightning as the tool and province of the gods—never to be understood, grasped, or controlled by humans. He uncovered or discovered its secret. By learning what it was, he took the tool of the gods and made it his own. He was not the first to discover facts about electricity, but his actions symbolize the process and the principle: boldly looking at reality, uncovering its secrets, and moving them from the realm of mystery and superstition to our realm of understanding and science.

Discovery is an active process involving interacting or experimenting with reality. You may not discover that you are great at painting, cooking, or singing until you try and observe the results. Often you will discover that you need more practice or that you need to master specific skills and techniques. However, without action, you cannot discover your strengths to move you forward or discover any weaknesses to be overcome. Discovery involves the honest looking at reality and the identification and understanding of what reality tells you. Your opinions, wishes, feelings, do not matter at this stage.  What matters is that you observe to the best of your ability, that you experiment, and that you see—with as much honesty and focus as you can muster—all that reality has to offer.

Discovery is not the end of the game; it is only the beginning. The second step in the process leads me to my second word: reflection. Discovery means you have learned something about reality and yourself. What should you do with that information? What does it mean? What do you do next? The answer is that you must think about what you learned. Why didn’t I pick the word thinking instead of reflection? Thinking is too broad in meaning for this context. While I am a big advocate of thinking in general and recognize it as the key to every successful human endeavor—without exception, my practice involves a particular type of thinking that is tied directly to reality and the facts I have uncovered about it. Reflection captures this meaning. A clear reflection in a mirror involves the accurate reproduction of reality.

As we think about things, we want to be careful that we do not go off course, that we do not imagine things that are not real or ignore things that are. We want to make sure that our thinking accurately reflects those facts about reality that we have discovered. Reflection is a type of careful thinking that takes each idea and connects it specifically to some fact about reality that we have discovered. There is nothing in your head to automatically guarantee that your thinking is correct. It is easy to go off course. It is easy to deceive yourself. It is easy to make the mistake that an early failure at a complex movement means that you will never master it. Reflection can protect you from such errors. If you fail in your first attempt, that is a fact, a part of reality that you cannot deny. So, the idea that you failed is valid; it corresponds to a fact you discovered. However, the idea that you will be bad at this every time you try is imaginary; you made it up. There is no discovery in reality, no fact in reality that corresponds to the notion that you will always fail. There is no reason to believe or to accept your imagined ideas when they do not reflect reality.

Reflection, then, is a type of self-check, a way of making sure that your ideas are validated by reality. Imagination can give you ideas about what you want to validate through discovery and reflection, but it leads to useful information only when the idea is tested. If you imagine you will always be bad at something, start testing your idea. Practice. Practice again and again. Discover if you get better or if you continue to be bad at it. Reflect on your progress honestly. If after a period of regular practice, you find that you still are no good at it, there is at least a possibility that you are right. Your conclusion has some support. But if you are much better now than you were when you started, that improvement supports the idea that you will eventually—with continued practice and diligence—get good at it.

Reflection also means holding a mirror up to yourself. Why do you like certain things? What makes you feel happy, successful, powerful or disappointed and sad? Why do you think you are good at something? How did you develop those skills? Reflecting on your strengths and understanding what worked for you previously helps you grow. Reflecting on the things that scare you and hold you back helps you develop the strengths you need to overcome those worries. When you reflect on your emotions, you discover ideas or premises that are the foundation of those emotions. This means you have the opportunity to reflect on those ideas and premises and test them against reality. Are they true or false? Do they correspond to reality or contradict it?

These two questions–Are your ideas true or false? Do your ideas correspond to reality or contradict it?–ask the same thing. Reality is the standard of right and wrong, of true and false. By actively reflecting about your ideas, your discoveries, your thoughts, and your feelings, you will eventually eliminate all contradictions from your entire life. You will reach a state where you see reality, and yourself in it, with full clarity and full understanding. The world has rules by which it behaves. Things act in a particular way. If you drop something, it falls. If you touch a fire, it hurts. If you act according to these rules, you will be successful. If you ignore the rules either by failing to discover them or by evasion, you fail. Acting in accordance with the rules of reality gives you a sense of self-confidence in your own ability. This leads me to my last word that captures this self-confidence: efficacy.

After practicing discovery and reflection again and again, you realize through experience that the world is knowable. You learn that you can discover it, learn its rules, and apply them successfully. You know that you have the power to validate your results along the way and correct any errors. Reflection gives you confidence that what you have discovered, is correct; your knowledge and conclusions are valid. Given enough time and effort, you know that you can reach any rational goal, understand any process, and check and refine your results thoroughly until you have the confidence of certainty. This mental state, where you know you can meet any challenge, learn anything, develop any skill, solve any problem is efficacy.

Efficacy is the power to produce a desired effect. Recognition of your own efficacy means that you have recognized your own potential for continued success and growth. Your choices of actions at this point are not based on concerns about current limits of your ability or understanding. Instead, your choices are guided by what skills, practices, and accomplishments will give you the most enjoyment, make your life better, increase your skills, or broaden your knowledge. Your experience in life changes from asking “What can I do?” to asking “What should I do to make my life the best it can be?”

The ancient Greeks had a word for this process of reaching your full potential: eudaimonia. I did not pick that as one of my three words, in part because it is even more obscure than efficacy, but eudaimonia was in the running. Aristotle wrote most extensively about eudaimonia, but it was important to many Greek philosophers. It is difficult to translate, because the concepts leading up to it are not widely understood in our culture. Few people today recognize that by understanding the rules of reality, validating them, and putting them into practice consistently, success is almost guaranteed—barring error or misfortune. Eudaimonia integrates these ideas into a process of living your best life. It is a continuous process of self-actualization where all the best conditions are in place: happiness, morality, meaning, purpose, the fulfilling of our special, unique potentials as humans. Efficacy is necessary to have the confidence to work toward eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia is more than just a final condition. It is the process of human flourishing. It is the process of doing those things that best help you function well as a human being at the highest level. My other two words, discovery and reflection, are both active processes, and I want to focus on the active process of developing and recognizing efficacy. Efficacy includes both being effective and recognizing that you are effective; it describes a self-aware competence in action. Eudaimonia is the goal, but recognizing and developing your own efficacy is how you get there and stay there.

Finally, I wanted three words that reflect my practice in terms of its essentials, but which could also help others find their personal path to success. The words had to capture the ideas of action and thinking, doing and learning–the Mover and the Mindset. They had to wrap up my process and philosophy in a way that captures who I am and provides value to the Movers Mindset audience. I think that discovery and reflection applied iteratively, building on previous knowledge and success leads to continued growth. Repeated experience with success and growth leads to a recognition of efficacy where you understand that you have potential to be successful in almost anything.

Activities that involve continuous improvements are often described as mastery practices. Mastery practices involve continuous improvement through discovery, reflection, and active practice with full recognition of efficacy. While mastery practices range from focused practices like law, medicine, martial arts, plumbing or carpentry, the most important mastery practice is living your own life to the fullest–reaching your full potential–eudaimonia. Since your full potential requires continuous improvement, it is important to develop the mindset–the set of ideas–that allows for this unceasing movement toward greater success and well-being. Discovery of this process, reflection to hone its accuracy, and development of efficacy are the steps that each individual must undertake independently.

Although your own path is unique, the principles involved are universal and can be learned from others. A goal of Movers Mindset is to bring these principles to light in an accessible way that encourages discovery and reflection while demonstrating and promoting efficacy in each individual. While you still have to walk the path on your own, under your own power and by your own effort, Movers Mindset hopes to make the path a little clearer.

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Content-encoding gzip, plus HTTP range requests, equals bad mojo

October 19, 2019

This is going to be long. You’ve been warned.

Act 1: Wherein our hero is oblivious to the trouble

Years ago, early in the life of my podcast, someone waved their phone at me and said, “sometimes the podcast playback jumps back to the beginning, and then I cannot skip or scrub forward to resume where I was.” I shrugged. What’s one problem report for Google Podcasts on Android, particularly since this was early days for Google’s Podcasts app.

Curious.

Aside: “scrub” is audio lingo for manually sliding through audio. On apps, there is usually a small grab-here marker at the current play position. If you touch that and slide, the audio will scrub along until the time where you let go. (Versus “skip” buttons which jump forward or backward a set amount of time.)

I have a vague memory of some later time, where some automated analysis of our podcast feed reported that we “don’t support range requests.” I initially ignored this, but made a note. One day—months later—I looked up what an [HTTP] range request is, and verified that our web site does in fact support range requests.

Curioser.

A week ago, I got another problem report. From an Android user with the Google Podcast app. First off, it’s no longer early days for that app, so I’m less inclined to just “blame the app” when someone speaks up. Second, the callout was more thorough. This person had tried several different of our episodes, (all of which exhibited the problem,) and they had verified that some other podcasts they subscribe to did not exhibit this problem.

“Curioser and curioser,” said Alice.

Our podcast is self-hosted. We run a virtual instance of CentOS on BlueHost, with Apache and WordPress, with the Seriously Simple Podcasting (SSP) plugin producing our podcast RSS feed. Seriously, none of that is simple. But it does mean that we have a tremendous amount of control—if we want to look under the hood. (Stop here. Take 4 minutes to watch that if you’ve never seen Mike’s New Car.)

Act 2: Wherein our hero heads into the belly of the beast

I asked the person who waved their problem at me years ago, “hey, uh, do you still see that problem?” (Yes they do.) …and I reached out to James Cridland at podnews.net and he verified that he too sees this behavior with my podcast files. …and he pointed out that he was seeing, (it’s not clear exactly what tool he used—but it doesn’t matter for this story,) content-type: gzip for the media file that we were serving.

Wait, wat.

Why am I serving a compressed (i.e., gzip’d) version of an MP3 file? That’s already a file containing compressed data; It probably increases in size when you gzip it. Not to mention the CPU cycles wasted gzip’ing the many-megabyte sized files for each reqeust.

Next the voice in the back of my head started pointing out that HTTP range requests—where the web client (in this story a podcast player app) can ask for a specific range of bytes from a resource—sure feels like the sort of thing that might be related to pulling down some of a file now, and then more of the file later after you’ve listened to it for half an hour. Maybe if we didn’t support range requests that would mess up skipping and scrubbing? But wait, no, I checked two years ago, (and I just rechecked,) that we support range requests. So what the heck?! Is the problem related to compression, to range requests, the combination, or something else?

Spock mode on. Start checking everything methodically. When you’ve eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains, must be the case.

What if we don’t actually support range requests on our media files? So I started digging into how Seriously Simple Podcasting (SSP) handles the actual feeding out of files.

Aside: I know enough about Apache and PHP to know that just because Apache supports range requests on files (“here’s 100 bytes from that MP3 you asked for…”) doesn’t mean that a PHP program would necessarily be able to answer a range request. Spoiler: It’s very hard to support a range request programmatically in PHP. So I need to know what exactly—Apache or SSP, which is just a pile of PHP code—actually feeds the media file?

So I posted on the SSP support forum…

I’m trying to troubleshoot a problem reported with the Google Podcasts player on Android. (I’ve one reporting user and I cannot personally reproduce the problem.) In the process, I went down a rabbit hole looking into HTTP range requests.

I’m wondering: If the the SSP plugin is serving the MP3 audio files via PHP (which would require the PHP code to implement supporting range requests) or if, after a redirection from the stats-collection URL, it let’s my web server (Apache) just send out the static file (in which case Apache itself handles range requests.)

One of the devs responded:

Do you perhaps have a URL describing HTTP range requests and how they relate to serving files behind the PHP redirect, so that I can understand how it could be causing the problem? From the cursory review I’ve done, it would appear we should update the plugin to support range requests, would you agree?

Which startled me both because range requests are apparently more obscure than I was thinking they are, and that this was a very nice olive branch from a developer right out of the gate. Anyway. I was already really doubting that SSP was causing this problem, so I put on my big-boy detective pants and dug deeper.

Leading me to post:

…I think it’s not actually a problem [with SSP], but I wanted to double-check my analysis with someone familiar with the code.

For range requests, it’s RFC7233 — but before you even bother looking at that. I think the answer is that SSP doesn’t handle the serving of the audio file via PHP, but rather leaves that to the underlying web server. (In my case, that’s Apache, which handles range requests of static assets.)

Straight from my RSS feed, I have (for example) <enclosure url="https://moversmindset.com/podcast-download/4734/062-chris-and-shirley-darlington-rowat-serendipity-family-and-relationships.mp3" length="29493071" type="audio/mpeg"></enclosure> and if I fetch that URL, I get SSP doing a redirection. Here I’m asking Curl to get me a range of bytes:

Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ curl -I --range 500-600 https://moversmindset.com/podcast-download/4734/062-chris-and-shirley-darlington-rowat-serendipity-family-and-relationships.mp3
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:55:48 GMT
Server: Apache
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0
Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Robots: none
X-Redirect-By: WordPress
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=6576b49ab4d78ab7628bb05a727805dd; path=/
Location: https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Aside: -I with curl says just give me the headers for a response for the requested resource. Not the actual resource. The 302 HTTP status, combined with the Location: header is standard web-speak for a web server saying, “please go get this resource instead.” Critically this is a 302 which is a “temporary” redirect, not a 301 which is a “permanent” redirect. With 302, if you want this resource again or more of it with another range request, you should ask for it again at the original URL. Versus with a 301, where you should not ask again, you should use the new location going forward with any subsequent requests. tl;dr: 302 + Location is what I expected to see.

…that curl request gives me a standard redirection. As expected(!) since SSP wants to track statistics. That new 302 location is a direct-link into the WP assets storage. When I curl that, making a range request again, it works perfectly. (Apache is happy to give me the 101 bytes I’m asking for.) Below is both the headers-only (-I in Curl) and a full fetch….

Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ curl -I --range 500-600 https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:58:33 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:51:01 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 101
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Range: bytes 500-600/29493071
Content-Type: audio/mpeg
Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ curl --range 500-600 https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3 > ./foo
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   101  100   101    0     0    389      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   388
Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ ls -alh ./foo
-rw-r--r--  1 craig  staff   101B Oct 11 10:58 ./foo

Aside: First a bunch of headers saying that I would receive [if I actually asked] 101 bytes of content-length, and then an actual request where I end up with 101 bytes in a file on my computer. tl;dr: everything as expected.

So I think the answer is that SSP doesn’t interfere with HTTP range requests. And that means the problem I’m trying to solve can’t be caused by my site not correctly answering range requests.

At this point, I folded my arms with one of those “hurumph” noises. Then I thought of something: Ya’ know, since it’s Apache that is going to feed me that MP3 file, it would totally be able to change its behavior based on what the web client, (aka, the podcast player app, Google Podcasts,) said it would accept as a response.

Aside: The Web is a conversation between web clients and web servers. Every request—and there can be hundreds of requests to show you one page—starts with the client asking for a resource and listing the types of responses it will accept. Think: am I wanting an image resource, an audio file, a blob of HTML, etc. Also, what types of encoding of those resources can the client understand. tl;dr: No more tl;dr’s here. We’re in the belly of the beast now.

So how do I tell curl to manipulate the encodings it should tell the server it would accept. Answer: By adding a header via the -H flag.

So reviewing: Here’s a normal ask for the headers for a specific media file. This isn’t a range request, this is just an ask for the headers for an entire resource:

Craigs-iMac:~ craig$  curl -I https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 13:09:27 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:51:01 GMT
ETag: "220031-1c2074f-5943f1052a358"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 29493071
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: audio/mpeg

That’s exactly what I expect: If I actually asked for the resource, I’d get about 30 megabytes of content back.

And what would happen if I tell curl (note the -H argument on this one) to tell the server that I’d be happy with a gzip’d response:

Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 13:11:03 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:51:01 GMT
ETag: "220031-1c2074f-5943f1052a358-gzip"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: audio/mpeg

Oh shit. It would send me a gzip encoded version of my MP3 file. And critically, it doesn’t tell me how big that would be—no Content-length is given—because the server would have to actually compress it with gzip to see how big it would actually be.

Aside: If you know about Apache’s ability to serve out pre-compressed versions of files—so you have the .mp3 and the .mp3.gz files laying on disk ready to go—if you know about that, then you don’t need to read any of this article. I was tempted to set that up just to have Content-length and the gzip encoding header in the shot because you would have noticed. ;)

So IF the client . . . say for example, oh, I don’t know, the Google Podcasts app maybe? . . . happens to mention that it could accept a gzip’d response, then boy-howdy a gzip’d response our Apache would send.

…and that’s a problem why? Because it turns out that you cannot combine compression (any sort, not just gzip) content encoding with range requests. The long version is this Stack Overflow thread, Is it possible to send HTTP response using GZIP and byte ranges at the same time? The short answer is, no, because even if I wanted to waste my time compressing it just to give you 100 bytes out of the middle, it’s not possible for you to then uncompress those 100 bytes. All modern compression algorithms work on streams of data—you have to start decompressing from the first byte.

Aside: The next version of HTTP addresses this because it turns out that being able to have range requests on resources compressed in flight would be very useful.

Ok smart guy, what happens if you try to make a range request and accept compression?

Craigs-iMac:~ craig$ curl --range 500-600 -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I https://moversmindset.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MM_62_Chris_and_Shirley.mp3
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 01:58:16 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:51:01 GMT
ETag: "220031-1c2074f-5943f1052a358"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 101
Content-Range: bytes 500-600/29493071
Content-Type: audio/mpeg

Honestly? That’s not what I expected. I was expecting some sort of actual error from the server.

But nope, that’s a perfectly happy, 101 bytes—or it would be if hadn’t specified I just wanted the headers—out of the full 30 megabytes-or-so, and it wouldn’t be compressed. This confuses the hell out of me because it’s exactly what you’d want. The app asked for something we can’t do so we skip the compression part—the app said it would accept compression, not that it demands compression.

Oh, who cares. Compressing MP3 files—especially live on the fly each time they are served—is totally the wrong thing to be doing. Let’s just stop that and hope the problem goes away.

Aside: You thought the wizard behind the curtain always figures it out? I’ve got some bad news for you sunshine, Pink isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotel…

Act 3: Wherein our hero vanquishes the problem by typing four characters

Still in Spock mode, let’s describe the actual problem…

  1. There’s crazy-level complexity with compression and range requests
  2. It’s not clear what exactly the Google Podcast app is requesting—I don’t have any Android devices and I’d have to capture TCP data from the network to even find out
  3. So the app makes some sort of request…
  4. …and the server responds
  5. Making scrub and skip not work.

Oh, well that’s perfectly clear then, isn’t it?

Seriously, screw this. I’m just turning off compression of MIME type “audio/mpeg” files. (MP3 files are an example of MIME type “audio/mpeg”.)

Aside: Yes, I said MIME—the Multipart Internet Mail Extension specification is how we ended up classifying what something is on the web. Major type “audio”, minor type “mpeg”. I know, this stuff is bonkers… it’s just turtles all the way down.

Since Apache does not compress things by default, all I have to do is find where the “DEFLATE”—that’s really what it’s called, gzip is one way of “deflating” files—output filter is assigned to handle files of MIME type “audio/mpeg.” That’s actually easy to do if you are fluent in Apache.

I’m an Apache configuration file wizard. I’ve been using Apache since it was spun off from something else in—I had to look it up—1995. Trivia: It was “a patchy server” cobbled together from some open-source work done—never mind, go read it on Wikipedia. ANYWAY.

I read over the entire Apache configuration, it’s complicated in files that include other files with nesting and logic and lions and tigers and bears… but it’s all perfectly clear and straight-forward to me…

…and yet I can’t see why it would EVER decide to apply the DEFLATE output filter to an audio/mpeg file.

Strike one. Off with the kid gloves.

If I can’t figure out where it’s turned on and remove that, the next best thing to do is to just add a rule that turns if off. But when I went to do that, I found that whoever designed the system architecture had already stumbled upon this mess. (Compressing media files is wrong-headed.) They already had a rule, which confesses the sin of wacky configuration by saying, “yo! for these media files, knock it off with the DEFLATE output filter!”

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI .(?:gif|jpg|png|ico|zip|gz|mp4|flv)$ no-gzip

As soon as I saw this, I was like, “you’re kidding me, right?” That says if the thing being requested ends with a period followed by any of those file extensions, then set an environment flag telling the DEFLATE module not to gzip.

…and “mp3” is not listed.

So I cursed like a sailor, threw my hands up in the air, and added “mp3|” to that string right after “mp4|”, restarted Apache, checked with James, and the problem is fixed.

omfg where’s my Tylenol?

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Georgia Munroe: Goals, Ninja Warrior, and coaching

September 11, 2019

Georgia Munroe: Goals, Ninja Warrior, and coaching

How does the relationship between creative hobbies, personal challenges, and coaching shape the practice and development of movement disciplines?

Georgia Munroe explains her interest in music and how that relates to her parkour practice, as well as how she became interested in parkour. She discusses the challenges and goals she is working on, before sharing her experiences with motion capture and Ninja Warrior. Georgia unpacks her thoughts on coaching, her personal journey of improving as a coach, and how coaching has affected her own parkour practice.

We always struggle with so much […] like when you first start, everything is fresh, everything is new. The only goal is to just turn up, and you get on with it. […] And now, when you start to find your footing, you start to see your character in your movement, you also see your insecurities, you also see the things that are harder than other things to do. You also see what your fears are, and facing your fears or seeing your fears, you want to overcome them. It’s scary, and you don’t want to, but you want to at the same time.

~ Georgia Munroe (17:32)

The conversation explores the interplay between creative hobbies, such as music and movement disciplines like parkour. Music provides Georgia with a natural sense of rhythm and timing, directly influencing how she approaches physical training and performance. This relationship highlights how artistic practices can cross-pollinate with athletic endeavors, enriching each in unexpected ways.

Another central theme is the transformative power of coaching and personal growth. Georgia reflects on the emotional challenges she faced, particularly her fear of failure, and how coaching others mirrors her own internal struggles. As she develops her coaching skills, she learns to manage self-doubt and anxiety, which ultimately enhances her ability to guide others. Her experiences competing in Ninja Warrior reveal how even high-stress environments can evolve from terrifying to enjoyable through mindset shifts and practice.

Takeaways

The influence of music on movement — Music provides rhythm and timing that directly translates to improved flow and efficiency in physical practice.

Facing personal fears — Overcoming fear and insecurity plays a major role in progressing as an athlete and coach.

The role of coaching in self-development — Coaching requires significant self-reflection and growth, shaping the way instructors manage both their own fears and those of their students.

Mindset shifts during competition — Competing in challenging environments like Ninja Warrior transitions from overwhelming to rewarding by focusing on relaxation and enjoying the process.

Embracing hard work over talent — Relying solely on talent can be limiting, while sustained effort and perseverance lead to greater long-term achievements.

The emotional journey of learning — Success often requires facing discomfort, repeated failure, and developing resilience.

Resources

Esprit Concrete — Coaching organization where Georgia Munroe trains and coaches, focusing on movement and mental development.

Ninja Warrior UK — Competitive obstacle course show in which Georgia Munroe competed, testing athleticism and mental resilience.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Daily reminders

August 4, 2019

I learned then that even when I felt powerless to control my job or education — or anything else that seemed out of my hands — I always had control over my own mind and how I treated others. Even when I had nothing else, I could still be kind, just, generous, honest, loving and compassionate.

~ Susan Fowler

slip:4a1138.

I find that I’ve often committed myself to an unmanageable number of responsibilities. There are so many things I have the personal power to do, that I seem to be compelled to constantly deploy my power. Worse, I feel guilty if I’m not constantly applying my power towards some goal. I end up with a forest of goals and a feeling of being trapped. Shortly after feeling trapped, I find myself sinking into the pits of dispair on the shore of the lake of learned helplessness.

One habit I’ve built to try to keep myself entirely away from that lake is a collection of daily reminders. Ever the process maniac, I have them in my personal task management system in a rotation that brings one up each day. There are enough of them that even though they are in a fixed order I never know which is next. Each feels like a fresh reminder. They are collected from Ben Franklin, Leo Babauta and some other places I’ve neglected to keep track of.

They are:

  1. AM I AN ENERGY-GIVER OR -TAKER? — Strive to lift others up; to leave them feeling better than before the encounter. While being mindful of my own energy level, seek ways to create a zest for life in others.
  2. BECOME MINDFUL OF ATTACHMENTS THAT LEAD TO CLUTTER AND COMPLEXITY — For example, if you are attached to sentimental items, you won’t be able to let go of clutter. If you are attached to living a certain way, you will not be able to let go of a lot of stuff. If you are attached to doing a lot of activities and messaging everyone, your life will be complex.
  3. TEMPERANCE — Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
  4. BE PROACTIVE — While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than meerly taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. (Habit 1)
  5. AM I LIKELY TO “ACT” OR “REACT” TO A TASK? — Seek the reason for the task so that it may motivate me to proper action. Otherwise, determine how to eliminate or avoid the task entirely. Do or do not; there is no try.
  6. SILENCE — Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
  7. WHAT AM I DOING WHILE ON “THE BENCH?” — If there is somewhere I want to be, begin walking. Identify something which I can do now, or very soon, which is interesting. Remember that efficacy is active, not passive.
  8. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND — Each part of your life can be examined in the context of the whole, of what really matters most to you. By keeping that end clearly in mind you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have to your life as a whole. (Habit 2)
  9. DISTRACTION, BUSYNESS AND CONSTANT SWITCHING ARE MENTAL HABITS — We don’t need any of these habits, but they build up over the years because they comfort us. We can live more simply by letting go of these mental habits. What would life be like without constant switching, distraction and busyness?
  10. ORDER — Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
  11. WHAT CAN I DO TO BE SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE ME? — Continuous improvement? A “big swing?” A simple but insightful solution? The path to “the best” is not obvious and likely does not directly through the most-obvious next thing.
  12. PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST — The degree to which we have developed our independent will in our everyday lives is measured by our personal integrity. Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It’s our ability to take and keep commitments to ourselves, to “walk our talk.” It’s honor with self, a fundamental part of the Character Ethic, the essence of proactive growth. (Habit 3)
  13. AM I AUTHENTIC OR OBSEQUIOUS? — Discerning the difference between obsequiousness and politeness can be difficult, but courtesy should be rooted in benevolence. Politeness should be the expression of a benevolent regard for the feelings of others; it’s a poor virtue if it’s motivated only by a fear of offending good taste. In its highest form Politeness approaches love.
  14. SINGLE-TASK BY PUTTING YOUR LIFE IN FULL-SCREEN MODE — Imagine that everything you do — a work task, answering an email or message, washing a dish, reading an article — goes into full-screen mode, so that you don’t do or look at anything else. You just inhabit that task fully, and are fully present as you do it. What would your life be like? In my experience, it’s much less stressful when you work and live this way. Things get your full attention, and you do them much better. And you can even savor them.
  15. RESOLUTION — Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
  16. THINK WIN/WIN — Most people tend to think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, hardball or softball, win or lose. But that kind of thinking is fundamentally flawed. It’s based on power and position rather than on principle. Win/Win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person’s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others. (Habit 4)
  17. HOW DO I TREAT SOMEONE I DON’T KNOW? — Your character shows in how you treat those who can do nothing for you.
  18. FRUGALITY — Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
  19. SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD — You’ve spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training or education have you had that enables you to listen so that you really, deeply understand another human being from that individual’s own frame of reference? (Habit 5)
  20. CREATE SPACE BETWEEN THINGS — Add padding to everything. Do half of what you imagine you can do. We tend to cram as much as possible into our days. And this becomes stressful, because we always underestimate how long things will take, and we forget about maintenance tasks like putting on clothes and brushing teeth and preparing meals. We never feel like we have enough time because we try to do too much. But what would it be like if we did less? What would it be like if we padded how long things took, so that we have the space to actually do them well, with full attention? What would it be like if we took a few minutes’ pause between tasks, to savor the accomplishment of the last task, to savor the space between things, to savor being alive?
  21. INDUSTRY — Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
  22. SYNERGIZE — What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part. (Habit 6)
  23. IS THERE AN ELEMENT OF STRUGGLE IN MY HISTORY? — This reminds me to be kind for everyone I meet is working through their own struggle. Through the experience of my own struggle I can better understand and emphathize with others on similar journeys. Furthermore, being reminded of my past struggles suggests perspective on my day-to-day general lack of struggle.
  24. MY OATH — Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I shall make no excuses and hold no grudges. I care not where I came from, only where I am going. I don’t compare myself to others, only to myself from yesterday. I shall not brag about successes nor complain about my struggles, but share my experiences and help my fellows. I know I impact those around me with my actions, and so I must move forward, every day. I acknowledge fear, doubt, and despair, but I do not let them defeat me.
  25. SINCERITY — Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
  26. SHARPEN THE SAW — It’s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have–you. It’s renewing the four dimensions of your nature: physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional. … “Sharpen the saw” basically means expressing all four motivations. It means exercising all four dimensions of our nature, regularly and consistently in wise and balanced ways. (Habit 7)
  27. WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING? — I’ve performed this experiment countless times: Read little: nothing happens. Read more: ideas, new connections, inspiration, questions, motivation, short-cuts, wonder.
  28. JUSTICE — Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
  29. FIND JOY IN A FEW SIMPLE THINGS — For me, those include writing, reading/learning, walking and doing other active things, eating simple food, meditating, spending quality time with people I care about. Most of that doesn’t cost anything or require any possessions (especially if you use the library for books!). I’m not saying I have zero possessions, nor that I only do these few things. But to the extent that I remember the simple things I love doing, my life suddenly becomes simpler. When I remember, I can let go of everything else my mind has fixated on, and just find the simple joy of doing simple activities.
  30. MODERATION — Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
  31. WOULD I WANT TO GO ON A LONG CAR RIDE WITH ME? — Long car rides are a quintessential American experience. Along with the good however, comes the opportunity for bad. With others present the confined space, lack of privacy, and monotony of rolling vistas create a microcosm of life on a tiny stage. How I share that stage with the others in the car, and what specifically I do while on that stage tells all.
  32. GET CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT, AND SAY NO TO MORE THINGS — We are rarely very clear on what we want. What if we became crystal clear on what we wanted in life? If we knew what we wanted to create, how we wanted to live … we could say yes to these things, and no to everything else. Saying no to more things would simplify our lives.
  33. CLEANLINESS — Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
  34. AM I SELF-AWARE? — The first step in my journey was realizing I was unhappy. This realization — detecting it, understanding it, believing it, surrendering to it, and finally owning it — was the first piece of bedrock on which I started building.
  35. TRANQUILLITY — Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
  36. PRACTICE DOING NOTHING, EXQUISITELY — No need to plan, no need to read, no need to watch something, no need to do a chore or eat while you do nothing. You will start to notice your brain’s habit of wanting to get something done. This exposes our mental habits, which is a good thing. Keep doing nothing. Sit for awhile, resisting the urge to do something. After some practice, you can get good at doing nothing, and this leads to the mental habit of contentment and gratitude.
  37. CHASTITY — Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
  38. WHAT IS MY TALK-TO-LISTEN RATIO? — It’s better to listen to understand, rather than to, (for example,) listen to refute. Silence is fine provided one’s own thoughts are pleasant company. When speaking, think first about why you are about to say whatever it is you’re about to say.
  39. WE CREATE OUR OWN STRUGGLES — All the stress, all the frustrations and disappointments, all the busyness and rushing … we create these with attachments in our heads. By letting go, we can relax and live more simply.
  40. HUMILITY — Imitate Socrates.
  41. FESTINA LENTE — Make haste, slowly. Or, unrestrained moderation. “The worker must be stronger than his project; loads larger than the bearer must necessarily crush him. Certain careers, moreover, are not so demanding in themselves as they are prolific in begetting a mass of other activities. Enterprises which give rise to new and multifarious activities should be avoided; you must not commit yourself to a task from which there is no free egress. Put your hand to one you can finish or at least hope to finish; leave alone those that expand as you work at them and do not stop where you intended they should.” ~ Seneca, On Tranquility [7]
  42. LOOK BACK — Look back at some of the things you’ve accomplished or experienced and think: Well if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
    “One never notices what has been done; One can only see what remains to be done.” ~ Marie Curie (4a585)

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slip:4b1 et al

Oct 2019: Added the seven habits of highly effective people from Stephen Covey’s book.
Jul 2020: Added, “what am I doing while on ‘the bench’?” and “what can I do to be so good they can’t ignore me?“
Oct 2020: Added, “festina lente“
Dec 2020: Added, “look back“
Jan 2021: Expanded this into a series of posts, Practicing Reflection.
Mar 2023: An updated list of the prompts is now posted at My Daily Reflection Prompts.

§9 – Twenty Minutes a Day

June 22, 2019

(Part 9 of 13 in series, Changes and Results)

One of my favorite ideas from Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, is the idea of a keystone habit. Keystone habits create a chain reaction; Changing and rearranging your other habits as you integrate the habit into your life. According to Duhigg, “keystone habits influence how we work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate”, and they “start a process that, over time, transforms everything.”

After self-awareness and self-assessment, my 20 minutes of stretching and recovery work every morning is by far the single most important thing I’ve changed in my journey. (“Every morning” is the goal, not always the reality.) Initially, it was the one critical first little piece of success from which I launched a pile of awesome changes. It continues to be my reliable fallback position when things go off the rails.

Every time I get stuck, fail at sticking to a good habit, or make a mistake with diet, I repeat to myself: Start again tomorrow. Start again tomorrow with one small bit of success first thing in the morning, (and a cup of coffee.)

How my “20 minutes” works:

Declare 20 minutes of “me-time” first thing in the morning. Literally explain to others that you are creating space for yourself to start your day. It’s not leave-me-alone time. If there are others in your household, they are welcome to visit you and interact. You may find they occasionally join you.

Go straight there, as soon as you can. Ok, yes, make a bathroom stop and obtain your beverage of choice on your way to your morning session. But you do not need to arrive at your space awake and ready to exercise. You only need to get there. The stretching and moving will gradually wake you up. It will also wake up your mind; You’re going to have twenty minutes every morning to peacefully review your yesterday, plan your today, or even practice some mindfulness meditation. But only if you want! Your initial goal is to simply get to your space ASAP each morning.

Create (or designate) a space. This is really critical. It cannot be a place that you have to setup; It has to be a place that always exists, that you can simply stumble into first thing in the morning. Find a few square feet and make it your own. A light, a little clock, maybe some music setup ready to go, maybe a yoga mat. Having a physical space (as simple or as complex as you choose to make it) will help your mind shift automatically. “I do this sort of stuff in this space,” becomes automatic.

Music? For a long time, I was really into electronica-esque music for this. (Sometimes I still use the music.) I fanatically groomed a Pandora station with electronic music that has absolutely no vocals—but obviously use whatever works for your, including no music if you prefer. When I use music, I want it to help me zone in on what I’m doing and forget the world.

Props, mats, weights, etc. Start simple. As you go along, you’ll discover things—an article on the Internet, a yoga class, a friend’s ideas—and you’ll take in new moves, stretches and exercises as your own. I started without yoga blocks, then one day found a new stretch I wanted to be able to use when I felt I needed it, and bought two simple yoga blocks for the purpose. This way everything you have in your space, has a purpose rather than being something that nags you, “oh, I should be using that.”

Simply stretching and moving is your first activity. What does your body want to do first? Just learning to be able to answer that question honestly each morning is a great lesson. Then what does it need next? Move when you feel like it. Engage muscles when you feel like it. Engage your brain when you feel like it. Twenty minutes goes by in a blink.

Other tips, tricks and resources

Take some yoga classes. Find a Yin yoga class and spend a few months learning.

No. Right. Now. Oliver Emberton has a great article, How to Debug Your Brain. It’s funny and really exactly what’s wrong with our brains. Emberton’s idea of hijacking a “transition” led me to aim for “first thing in the morning.” I hijack the, “I just got out of bed” transition as many mornings as I can. My rationale is: I was literally just ignoring everything when I was unconscious, so I can continue ignoring everything for a little longer while I put me first.

Focus on what you can control. Iterate. Steve Kamb wrote an article talking about each Avenger’s super power, and Tony Stark’s power specifically, What’s Your Avengers Superpower. Stark is not actually a superhero. Stark simply knows the rule: you can’t edit a blank page, and you can’t improve a machine that hasn’t been built yet. Iterate.

When Life Sucks

Exercise Obstacle

How to Create Habits That Stick

How Lego and Minecraft Will Help You Get in Shape

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§7 – Exercise

April 18, 2019

(Part 7 of 13 in series, Changes and Results)

Exercise is not about weight loss.

Exercise builds physical ability and mental health.

For me, it began when I fell in love– with a bicycle.

The story of a boy and his bicycle

Long after college, way down in my downward death spiral, I bought a cheap mountain bicycle. Today, I don’t recall what possessed me to even want to buy a bike. I guess it just reminded me of the freedom I’d discovered when as a kid I first set out on a bicycle.

At the time, we were living in an apartment a short ride from a long park that followed a meandering creek. The park has long trails—some asphalt, some packed gravel—that follow the creek, and it has a few, short, side trails that almost resemble mountain biking.

I fell in love.

I fell in lust is probably more accurate.

I pedaled and pedaled. …and then I pedaled some more. …and then a lot more. I literally wore out that cheap, beautiful bike in the first summer.

During that summer we bought a mountain bike for my dad. He bought an hybrid bike for my mom. Then for a Christmas present, my parents and Tracy bought me a nicer bike. Whereas I was previously crazy about riding, with a new, better, lighter bike, I took things up several notches to addiction, and began riding the daylights out of everything.

I bought a “Mountain Biking Pennsylvania” book and started just heading out to ride trails from the book. Tracy bought a Cannondale when she changed jobs, and then things got out of hand—like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas out of hand. In the end, I was directly responsible for 27 people going to a particular bike shop and buying bikes because I kept trying to find someone who had the bicycling bug as bad as me.

I pedaled on into the seasons. I commuted the short 2 miles to and from my office in rain and snow. I had studded snow tires for the winter. I replaced bike parts as they wore out, and modified the bike more and more until the bike shop owner, (at this point, a good friend,) finally said, “You know, there are other bikes.” It had never occurred to me that I could own more than one bike. he looked at me like the simpleton I was, “Craig, some people have so many bikes, they hide the newest ones from their wives.”

Re-learning to move

The story continues of course. (The new bike is named Beelzebub, and is the first bike I’ve ever named.) But this article is about “exercise”, not about my affairs with bikes.

In the midst of it all, I understood that it was all partly the runner’s high aspect. But also knew that I simply felt better the more I rode those bikes. Sure my wrists got sore, and I became a menace in the local park zooming around and around like it somehow mattered in the grand scheme. But in the process, my body was changing.

Much later I learned that what I had done was change my identity; changed the way I saw myself. I became the sort of person who would get up early on weekends to drive an hour to ride a bike all over some trail because it was “Trail number #87” in a book. I became the sort of person who learns about bikes, then learns about exercise, and then learns about glycogen storage in muscles.

At the very beginning of the bicycling epoch, I was building a lot of muscle. Well, a “lot” compared to the gelatinous blob of fat I had converted myself into after college. Muscle requires energy to build it and then some energy to maintain it. So in the beginning I got a small win on weight loss, just by adding muscle. As my daily caloric needs went way up, it halted the creeping weight gain.

Years later I learned that exercise is simply, generally healthy.

That sounds like a platitude, but it’s not: Even small amounts of exercise have out-sized benefits in your health and your daily mood. If I exercise just a little, (for example, 20 minutes of moderate walking,) then I sleep better that night, and every time I exercise I get a small psychological benefit.

The key point was the change in my mental health: Exercise made me feel better, and the better I felt, the more I wanted to exercise. Exercise didn’t make me lose weight: It improved my health, and I became the sort of person who weighs less. That sounds subtle, but it’s tremendously easier than trying to lose weight directly.

Compensatory adaptation

I changed my behavior (I added biking) and my body responded by adapting. (Compensatory adaptation from Ned Kock is a great, deep-dive.)

I added some muscle, changed some hormone levels and interactions, cleaned up some mitochondrial function, and other things improved. But soon (it was probably about a year) my body had adapted to where its new state worked well enough for the activities I was doing regularly. This is the famous plateau effect.

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t realize this is what was happening (the plateau). I just bike bike bike bike biked all over everything. Meanwhile I was tracking things in my health journal, tweaking things here and there (sleep, moving dinner-time earlier, food choices, etc..)

How would you implement this intentionally? If you are even farther out of shape than I was at the start, I don’t suggest starting with biking. Walking is probably better, or maybe even swimming. Exactly what you do isn’t the point. It’s that you begin to exercise. Don’t to do in the sense that, “I have to go exercise now.” (This is why gym memberships generally don’t work as a New Year’s resolution.) Rather, you want to exercise just as something you do, and that will transform yourself into the type of person who exercises.

I am the type of person who…

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How to win the Internet

February 21, 2019

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

~ Vannevar Bush from, As We May Think

slip:4ubaae2.

Over in the Movers Mindset community I’ve started a topic titled, How to win the Internet, where I’ve been trying to unpack all my processes and way-of-thinking around how I manage (or at least, attempt to manage) everything I learn.

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Lions and tigers and bears oh my

August 22, 2018

Imagine if the NFL had to choose between receiving taxpayer funds or allowing its players to exercise their First Amendment rights. Imagine if Facebook had to choose between Section 230 immunity and incorporating the First Amendment into its terms and conditions. Imagine if the First Amendment got the shot in the arm that it desperately needs.

~ Marc J. Randazza from, «https://www.popehat.com/2018/06/19/randazza-trump-twitter-the-nfl-and-everything/»

This article is rabid. I mean, feces-flinging monkies rabid.

…and suggests a really intriguing idea: What if, in order to receive federal money, or other special consideration from the Federal Government, that entity had to incorporate the principles of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constituation?

This spun me off on a tangent I had once followed long ago: The Constitutional Law concept of “incorporation.”

Question: It is obvious that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricts the U.S. Federal government. But does it also restrict each of the State governments?

What if your State constitution happens to NOT have free-speech protections built into it? Would that mean the State could limit your speech? What about all those other layers of government below the State government? What about all the other protections in the U.S. Constitution?

I mean– I bet you just ASSUMED the First Amendment protected you all the way down to your local government.

It turns out that the Judiciary, around the turn of the twentieth century, has been following a principle called “incorporation.” Thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution saying that States cannot deprive people of “liberty” without “due process of law” … BAM! The first Amendment is incorporated in “due process of law”!

…and then that made me nervous because it seems a little tenuous.

Try this: constitutional law concept of incorporation

…or Wikipedia’s, “Incorporation, in United States law, is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was first ratified, courts held that its protections only extended to the actions of the federal government and that the Bill of Rights did not place limitations on the authority of state and local governments.”

Wait, “portions”?! Oh this is sounding sketchy…

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Do calories matter?

January 27, 2018

In a word, yes.  But, technically this is the wrong question.  The correct question is probably closer to, “What is the impact of the calories I consume on my body’s ability to store fat versus burn fat?”
…
Conventional wisdom, perhaps better referred to as Current Dogma, says that you gain weight because you eat more than you expend. This is almost true! To be 100% true, it would read: when you gain weight, it is the case that you have necessarily eaten more than you expended. Do you see the difference? It’s subtle but very important — arguably more important than any other sentence I will write. The first statement says over-eating caused you to get fat. The second one says if you got fat, you overate, but the possibility remains that another factor led to you to overeat.

~ Peter Attia, from «http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter»

slip:4ueanu1.

All of the success in the last (roughly) five years boils down to the following strategy. Notice that “excercise” does NOT appear…

1) realize I would like to improve my health

2) read something (anything) about health, diet, metabolism… anything that piques my interest. But it has to be something I think is TRUE. No crazy “fad” stuff. Something sane like, “yogurt seems to be good for me to eat.”

3) reduce friction to lead to that change. NOT, “force change by making rules.” I want to eat more yogurt? …make sure it’s on the grocery list so it ENDS UP IN THE HOUSE. I want to stop eating Doritos? EAT LUNCH BEFORE GOING TO MARKET, DO NOT BUY DORITOS.

There is no step 4. Everything else happens automatically. There is NO CURE for curiosity. Each thing I read and adjust leads to more, interesting questions. And along the way, more activity just happens automatically as my health improves.

Yes yes yes. I’m personally interested in movement and Art du Déplacement, etc. So I’m also doing this process in that realm. Forget about that. The success with my health, came all from my diet.

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Simplicity in 2018

January 1, 2018

Paring down one’s possessions and schedule are go-to ways to seek simplicity because they are outward, accessible, concrete actions that produce fairly immediate results. Their weakness, when practiced as their own ends, however, is that they lack a set of overarching criteria for how they should be carried out, as well as intrinsic motivation for following them through.

Practicing outward moves towards simplification, without this set of criteria, is like placing spokes in a wheel, without connecting them to a hub.

Simplicity needs a heart, and its center must be this: having a clear purpose.

~ Brett McKay, from The Spiritual Disciplines: Simplicity

slip:4uaosi1.

Throughout 2017 I’ve been slowly paring down. Fewer physical things sure, but also changing out some things and hobbies and projects and people. Can I eliminate one? Can I replace two of something with a simpler one?

I’m a “systems” person. I get things done via the observe, orient, decide, and act loop. For 2018 I’ve no delusions of rewiring my brain and kicking all my systems and processes to the curb.

I’ve realized, (far too recently,) that I need to take more time to “zoom out” and to take the time to consider how the really big things in my life fit together. Do they fit together? What if some really big component of who I am — even if it’s a great, fine thing — doesn’t fit with the rest of everything? What should I change; everything else, or that one great, fine thing?

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do love to spend the indoor, chilly, winter season thinking about the big picture — and now, perhaps a bit more of the really big picture.

Goodbye 2017! I will look back on you fondly.

MEMENTO MORI

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§3 – Reviewing

December 25, 2017

(Part 3 of 5 in series, Travel Gear)

This third part — the last of the think-y pieces, I promise! — is about the process of reviewing and continuous improvement. The subsequent parts of this series are small ideas and inspirations about the literal things to take with you traveling.

Hey, great trip. Welcome home. Drop your bag. Sleep if you need to. But now it’s time to review!

Overture: Missing or broken.

Here you’re reviewing the things you did not have with you. You’re trolling your recent experience in search of things to add to your packing. Either things to always carry, or maybe just things to have on hand, ready to pack, to give you more options on future trips.

If you recorded any notes, (“I wish I had brought…,” “Widget is broken,”) go over those notes and turn them into decisions:

Buy some thing, (or add it to your general list of things to do, “buy this thing when I have spare cash”,) find a solution for some problem, (or add “find solution to the problem” to your to-do list,) etc. Then get rid of the notes!

Aside: Those notes are the result of what is called “capture.” You had an idea, you captured it, but that’s not a solution. You have to convert that “captured” item into something; buy it, fix it, or turn it into however you keep track of things to do.

Beginner level: Did I use it?

As you handle everything you’re unpacking, ask: Did I use it?

YES? Great, put it away. (Working it to neutral of course! Wash it, refill it, fix it, etc.)

NO? Why did I pack it? Should I pack it next time?

Some things always get a pass. For example, my medical/urgency kit usually does not get used, but I’m always going to carry it. Ditto for a few things like my travel flashlight. I put all of these “they get a pass even though I did not use them” items away first.

Anything left? Great! These are your first batch of things to review. Ask yourself: Why did I pack this in the first place? What was I thinking? What was I preparing for? In the future, would I be ok without this?

Aside: I once went over-night hiking along the Appalachian trail. Although we were planning to stay in a shelter, we brought a tent in case the shelter was full. I carried a hammer in case we had to drive tent stakes. I brought a hammer on a hike along a mountain full of rocks on the chance we might need to drive tent stakes. By the end of that hike, I had learned a very important lesson about carrying things which I only _might_ use.

Intermediate: Start keeping track of what you pack.

Along the way, I started keeping lists– eventually very detailed lists– of everything I packed. I started by writing a list of what I was thinking of packing. Then as I packed, and added or decided against packing items, I kept the list up to date. When I returned, I would sometimes add notes about things I didn’t use, along with my decisions about whether I should pack that next time. For me this was particularly helpful for some of the less-used things I kept forgetting.

At the “Beginner” level, we gave a pass to anything we used. But at this level, we want to start thinking about anti-packing things even though we’ve used them.

Advanced: Actively removing items and weight.

Once you know what you are packing, you can go after obvious things to save weight and space:

One of the heaviest things in my bag turned out to be my iPad with its attached keyboard-cover in a Pelican case. I realized that for $20 I could buy a smaller version of the same keyboard cover, which not only weighed less, but also fit into the next size smaller Pelican case. This ended up being a huge weight and volume savings.

I travel with an external battery and charge devices from the battery. I charge the battery when power is available. I realized that I never drained the battery completely, and sometimes I’d go entire trips without recharging the battery. Since I was already carrying the charging cable and power brick, I bought a smaller battery which weighs half as much.

Soon I had “minimized” all the big items, and reached a point where I could fit everything I needed into my bag. At this point I was traveling comfortably. As my trips became more complicated and involved more movement, (walking longer distances, more complex transportation combinations, etc..) it became obvious that weight was the limiting factor.

I eventually went so far as to weigh everything. I literally weighed every individual item, to the gram, and put them in an outline with sub-totals. I can literally pack using the outline and predict what the final pack will weigh.

Why on Earth would I want to do that?!

When I had things in an outline with sub-totalled lists, I could look at each unit, (M’Urgency kit, bathroom kit, sleep system, etc) and look at the heaviest ones. I could then search for solutions to shave weight a tiny bit at a time. It adds up, and I was easily able to turn a 30 pound pack into a 25 pound pack, and know exactly what to pack if wanted to set a weight limit. (For example, if I know I have to be out-and-about for long periods with my entire pack. I can pack ultra-light sacrificing some comfort of course.)

Wrap up

This part concludes the large introduction pieces of this series. The following parts are actually the parts of the series which I first began writing. As I collected and organized them, I realized I needed to capture all the information in these first posts.

I hope you’ve found these introductory parts useful, and I hope you find more useful ideas in the following posts!

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§5 – Sleep

September 13, 2017

(Part 5 of 13 in series, Changes and Results)

Q: I’ve been entirely preoccupied by a most frightening experience of my own. A couple of hours ago, I realized that my body was no longer functioning properly. I felt weak, I could no longer stand. The life was oozing out of me, I lost consciousness.

Picard: You fell asleep.

sigh Sleep. Sweet. Rejuvenating. Blissful. …when you can get it.

Preamble

There is a huge amount of information about sleep available on the Internet. Over the years, I’ve collected a wide range of references upon which I’ve based my actions and opinions. I do this for a lot different topics, and I have a companion web site where I collect all the health related information I’ve found. In the case of Sleep, please see Sleep Quality, Light Sensitivity in the Human Brain, and Magnesium and Sleep over on Hilbert’s Library.

Darkness

I sleep best in complete darkness.

Long ago, I had no idea that light was messing up my sleep quality. Light is everywhere in modern life: it comes from windows, from doorways, from the alarm clock’s LED numerals, from the blinking LEDs on the WiFi router. But, after a lot of reading, and over ten years of experimenting, I’m convinced that light is enemy number one.

Sure there are other things which will wake me, (noise, movement, etc) but light is pervasive. Light is subtle. Light is insidious. Rage! Rage against the light!

So the goal for me is complete darkness.

Aside: Yes, I’ve considered using a sleep mask to cover my eyes. However, the human brain is broadly sensitive to light, so I’m not convinced a light mask is as good as a good old-fashioned dark room. See Light Sensitivity in the Human Brain.

My life is organized around the time on the clock, so I do not have the luxury of arranging my sleep around the sun’s rise and set. Therefore, I needed to manipulate my environment. When I began hacking my sleep at our apartment, my first light source to tackle was a street light that completely illuminated our bedroom through a high window in our cathedral ceiling. I had to buy a tall ladder just so I could climb up and cover the entire window with cardboard wrapped in velvet. Although we only had nearly-useless mini-blinds on all the other windows, this first light-reduction hack made an improvement in my sleep quality.

When we bought a house, the bedroom was the first room we remodeled. We set it up to be PITCH BLACK. The alarm clock is dimmed, there are no chargers or electronics in the room, and I added black-out curtains to the windows. Each night, when I first lie down to sleep, I cannot perceive a difference between having my eyes open or closed. (Of course, by the middle of the night, my dark adapted eyes can easily tell the difference.) If I step out of the bedroom in the wee hours of the night, the rest of the house seems so bright! There’s a light on the smoke detector, all the windows admit outside light, the microwave’s clock, the standby light on the TV, and on and on.

So my first suggestion is to get as close as you can to pitch black. Change things, move things, buy things, whatever — sleep is the most important part of your life.

The alarm clock

Initially, I had a generic alarm clock… beep beep beep BEEEEP! There’s nothing like waking up with a shot of adrenaline and cortisol to start me off on the wrong foot for the day.

First, I changed to an alarm clock which played music, but it had blindingly bright green numerals. Eventually I read about alarm clocks which have a bright light which slowly — over a half hour — fades up to fully illuminate the room. (Search for “Philips HF3470”; It’s discontinued, but it will get you going in the right direction.) Some mornings, the fact that “the sun has come up” in the room is enough to wake me up. But usually, the alarm clock proceeds to an audible alarm, and ours urges us by playing various tweeting bird sounds. (If I wasn’t so deaf, the light would probably wake me up enough to hear the actual birds outside.)

When to sleep

If you have all the above under control, you can technically sleep at any time of day. But there’s a catch: You need time to physiologically wind down before going to sleep. If it’s bright daylight when you want to sleep, you’ll need to craft a dimmed, calm space where you can relax and wind down. (But not where you actually sleep, don’t lay on the bed to wind down. More on not making your bed a multi-use space below.)

Consistency in sleep times is key. There are physiological processes which occur in the body which are not under conscious control. The body works on habit (and environmental cues) and it’s sluggish about changes. Wonky work shifts that make you change your sleeping patters are not healthy; if you’re into that type of work, just realize you’re trading your quality of life to accomplish your job. Be sure it’s worth it.

Remember: For me, sleep is the most important thing in my life. Work, play, scheduling, consistency… these are all things I’m will to work on, hack on, and change, to improve my sleep schedule because poor sleep leads to a poor life.

Temperature

Slightly cooler works for me (and agrees with what I’ve read.) But it doesn’t seem to matter too much. As long as you’re comfortable. But if the temperature is consistently UN-comfortable, you need to correct that.

There are obvious ways to hack the temperature, (e.g., air conditioning, a fan,) but you can also hack the general room environment. Figure out where the air moves through the room. (For example, if air normally moves from your open window to the door, move your bed to be near the window.) Get creative and sling a hammock across your room and sleep close to the floor, (where it’s cooler in summer, or closer to the ceiling where it’s warmer in winter.) Find the room with the best sleeping temperature and move your bedroom there.

Different mattress and sheet surfaces will feel cooler or warmer, so experiment to find what works best for you. Different types and extent of clothing obviously matters, but have you actually experimented to see how what you wear (or don’t wear) affects your perception of temperature?

Comfort

In general, splurge on things for your bed: Mattress, sheets, covers, comforters, pillows etc. Buy the most comfortable mattress, and the sheets you love to slide into. Then go another step and buy two sets of the sheets you love. (When you change the sheets you can strip and immediately remake the bed with clean linen.)

Improve the psychological comfort of your bed. Make changes, and build habits, which make the bed a comfortable, inherently relaxing, space. Room details such as color (hint: darker hues and blues are relaxing), lighting and general “busyness” of the room all have a subtle effect on your mood.

Slightly less obvious is to make your bed every morning. It doesn’t have to be fancy with specific folds or tucks, just make it up to whatever your definition of “made up” is. Later, each time you see the bed it will look inviting all made up, and you’ll look forward to peeling it open and sliding in.

Because it is a large, clear, open, space it will generally attract — but especially if you make it up each morning — random items throughout the day. Pay attention to what ends up on the bed and find proper homes, or invent systems, to keep those things off the bed. (For example: Clothes go ‘here’, worn-but-still-wearable items go ‘there’, pets are excluded by closing the door, put a chair in the room for sitting when dressing, etc.)

Avoidance

I’ve read various things about avoiding blue light in general, computer screens, TV, etc. But I’ve found that simply avoiding whatever it is that “winds me up” is sufficient to not sabotage my sleep. So, while I will look at my computer or phone near bed time, I don’t go to web sites or apps where I know I’ll get sucked down the rabbit hole. Instead, I’ll read through news feeds, e-books, or review my personal productivity systems and to-do lists. A lot of being able to readily fall asleep is related to my thinking-brain being relaxed. If there are things on my mind then I find I’ll be stuck laying awake in bed.

Eating

As with everything here, the key is to figure out what foods, and what eating times, affect your sleep.

I try to avoid eating within a few hours of going to sleep.
(In another part of this series, I’ll talk about intermittent fasting.) I find that I can sleep very well after a meal, particularly if I’ve had a couple hours for my digestion to get started.

What I’ve eaten also has a huge impact on my ability to fall asleep, and on my sleep quality. Too many sweets, or almost any amount of alcohol, to close to bed time will affect my sleep; I can fall asleep, but after an hour or so I find I’m wide awake. Same thing if I drink too much coffee. I’m pretty sure the stimulants (sugar, caffeine) and depressants (alcohol) affect my ability to reach the deeper sleep levels, and so I wake up instead of sleeping deeply. There’s a tremendous amount of information available about food and diet. Related to sleep, it’s worth looking into issues of digestion and experimenting to see what works for you.

Magnesium

There is solid evidence that Magnesium deficiency can cause sleep problems (restless legs, muscle cramps and more.) It is also a well-known relaxant. So that’s doubly suggestive that Magnesium (reading, experimentation, supplementation) could be very useful in improving your sleep. See Magnesium and Sleep.

Technology

There’s a lot you can do in terms of tracking sleep with things like Fitbits and Beddits. (Tracking is part of the “quantified self” movement.) Here again, the goal would be to measure something (sleep duration, quality, presence of sleep apnea, number of sleep cycles, etc.,) correlate that with how you feel and how it affects your life, and then make adjustments to your sleeping environment, habits and life in general. I did a small amount of tracking with a Fitbit. (I didn’t like the blindingly-bright green lights it uses for the pulse sensor. That’s how dark it is where I sleep.) But, for the period of time when I was tracking my sleep quality, it certainly helped focus my attention and efforts on improving my sleep.

Mental Activity

If I have too much on my mind, I sometimes have trouble falling asleep. When I first started working on my sleep I wasn’t yet journaling. Years later I started journaling and I found that emptying my brain in the evening was a wonderfully relaxing way to prepare for bed. Over the years, it became clear that as my time ran out each day, sitting down consistently to journal was difficult. So these days, I don’t regularly journal in the evening. (Instead, I write as part of my morning routine.) But sometimes I will journal to empty my thoughts if I feel that I’ve too much on my mind to readily fall asleep.

Room Usage

Don’t do anything other than sleep in your bed. Don’t read in bed, watch tv, or use digital devices. Whatever you do regularly, that is what you’re training yourself to do in that space. Have a “going to bed” routine, and turn out the lights.

Napping

For me, I can take a half hour blink-nap in the afternoon without it missing up my sleep. (A blink-nap is where I’m thinking, “I feel like I need a nap,” I lay down, blink, and a half hour has elapsed.)

Next up…

A few things I have not tried…

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§2 – Unpacking

July 8, 2017

(Part 2 of 5 in series, Travel Gear)

Every time someone was looking for something my grandfather would bark out:

Put it where you got it! It’ll be there when you go for it!

When I was little, I thought that was pretty cool. Turns out it’s a variation of the old adage:

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Unpacking begins with things having a place

In certain productivity and self-improvement circles there is an idea called Clearing to Neutral. Simply put, when ceasing work on something think ahead to the next time a task will be worked on, and eliminate as much start-up friction as possible.

Having all your travel and packing items in their place means packing for a trip is simply taking things out and putting them into your bag. (And perhaps some things should simply be kept in your bag.) That’s as close to zero-friction as possible. So clearing to neutral suggests I prepare for the next trip by immediately putting everything away.

So where to keep the stuff? The first iteration is to simply have a pile of things on a shelf, or in a drawer, where you know you keep “the travel stuff.” The next iteration might be a dedicated bag, or large box. But the best solution I’ve found is to use translucent plastic filing tubs. (For example, these filing tubs.)

These tubs are perfect; you can see what is in them and they are easy to handle. I have one which holds things I grab most frequently; for example, my micro-flashlight and M’Urgency kit. I have another tub which holds the less-used random stuff; for example, the replacement o-rings for my flashlight, those little toothpaste tubes the dentist gives me, refills for my cartridge razor, and my rarely used, travel laundry kit. When packing, I just pull the tubs out and grab what I need.

The tubs can be stored on a high shelf, on the floor in the back of a closet, or in the garage. Regardless how exactly you store your travel gear, it should have a dedicated home where things don’t get dirty, lost, or eaten by your cat.

Exploding

So now everything has its place, and I’m mentally prepared to spend time putting things away when I return. But I have a problem: When I return, some — often most — of my stuff is not ready to be stored.

I gave out a bandaid from my M’Urgency kit which needs to be replaced. The sheet from my sleep system needs to be washed. I lost a zipper-pull on my backpack that needs to be replaced. My flashlight needs a new battery. My razor needs a new cartridge. I need a new bar of soap. …and on and on.

Each of these issues is a very small thing to take care of, and it is tempting to leave these small tasks for later. But this is exactly the moment where a little work now leads to zero-friction later. This is where the magic of clearing to neutral shines. All of those little issues would slow me down — or worse, leave me in the lurch during a trip — when next I pack to travel. By taking care of them when I return, I eliminate all the friction and make packing a breeze when the next opportunity arises.

If I’m exhausted, I may simply set my bag down and go to sleep. But when I’m ready to unpack I explode everything in one place. I pull everything out and if it’s ready to store, (that is to say, it is ready to use again when I next travel,) I put it away immediately. If it needs something, I leave it in the exploded area. Normally, this is right in the middle of the floor, in the middle of a room. So the goal is to clean up the entire pile. Laundry into the laundry basket, or better yet, right into the washing machine. Get a fresh battery, change it and put the flashlight away. Grab a spare zipper pull and fix the backpack. Grab a bandaid and razor cartridges from the spares tub and fill up the M’Urgency and bathroom kits; then put them away. Zip, zap, done.

Aside: I clear everything to neutral. Years ago, my Hueco backpack came with spare zipper-pulls. I put them in a ziplock bag, with a 3×5 card that says “spare zipper pulls for Hueco” in the tub of less-used items. By the time I lost a zipper-pull, I had completely forgotten it had come with spares. But I knew that _if_ I had spare zipper-pulls, they’d be in the less-used tub. And there they were!

Using processes like this will expand outward into the rest of your life. I just used the last of the spare razor catridges from the storage tub to refill my bathroom kit? Add “razor cartridges” to the shopping list that we keep in its assigned place, so everything is on the list when someone goes to the market. Go to the market, buy what is on the list.

As you’re unpacking, sorting, cleaning, repairing, etc all your stuff, you’ll find you’re automatically reviewing; Which is the next part of this series.

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