Self-improvement

Small changes

September 28, 2018

Watching TV, for example, or playing massively multiplayer online games, can feel relaxing and even stimulating at times. But those hours spent relaxing and stimulating yourself can really add up, and when you tally the eventual sum of the life benefits, it ends up awfully close to zero. Many other leisure pursuits (complaining, ATV riding, shopping) often end up the same way.

~ Peter Adeney from, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/08/13/the-surprising-effect-of-small-efforts-over-time/

slip:4umote1.

I try not to get all preachy about how I think everyone should live their lives. After all, I’ve still plenty of room for improvement.

But just in case you are still wasting your life doing any of the above . . .

ɕ

What are the odds?

September 26, 2018

What does such a statistic have to do with your personal chance of success? Nothing at all.

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/what-are-the-odds-of-becoming-a-black-belt/

slip:4usebo20.

This has nothing to do with martial arts.

If you—you reading this right now—are NOT making mistakes, you are not learning.

Put another way: If you are always certain—or if you can’t take action until you are certain—then you are not doing the work you need to be doing.

ɕ

Triage

September 25, 2018

The practice of triage is a challenge of consciousness. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when you’re staring at a project screaming for your attention. But you still need to muster the awareness to ask, “Is this the most important thing that must be done by me right now?” Whenever you fail to ask this question, you can bet there’s a more important project being stalked by the Grim Reaper.

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/triage/

slip:4usebo21.

There are many variations of this. My favorite is currently a large note above my desk which reads…

2018: “HELL YES!” or “no”

Regardless, Covey’s quadrants are an excellent way to triage things.

I’m adamant however, that one’s goal should be to do nothing in Covey’s quadrants 3 and 4—things which are “not important”, wether they are urgent or non-urgent. See also, Time management.

ɕ

Constant optimization

September 21, 2018

An unexpected benefit of all this self-imposed change is that it helps protect you from forming bad habits, which are hard to change once you get them. In fact, change itself becomes the habit, which is a good one to carry with you through your life. The willingness to experience change brings opportunity, wealth, learning, and happiness for most of us who embrace it.

~ Peter Adeney from, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/05/15/the-principle-of-constant-optimization/

slip:4umote2.

Wait. Is he saying there are people who don’t optimize?

ɕ

Frugal

August 31, 2018

On the other hand, if you dump your trash in the forest to avoid paying the city’s garbage fees, or haggle endlessly with the manager at big-box store to get things for free, you’re not helping anyone but yourself. Canceling TV service and taking up the more productive hobby of reading library books is Frugal. Saving the same amount of money by voting down property tax funding for your local school system is Cheap.

~ Peter Adeney from, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/10/24/frugal-vs-cheap/

slip:4umofu1.

Even my title.

ɕ

I suck and I know it

August 29, 2018

There. That was a mouthful, and it makes you sound like a loser. But all of a sudden, you’re no longer a victim. Suddenly, you’ve framed the problem entirely in terms of things you can control yourself, and thus you can finally make some progress towards solving your problem.

~ Peter Adeney from, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/07/10/to-achieve-greatness-you-must-first-acknowledge-that-you-suck/

slip:4umoto1.

In terms of money and fitness— I suck. Yeah, you laugh… it is SO easy to brush this step off.

I brushed it off for about forty years.

ɕ

Suffering is not what you think it is

August 25, 2018

Suffering is nothing more than a lack of consciousness. The more conscious you become, the less you suffer. The act of raising your consciousness is really a process of letting go of every thought that causes you to suffer. This process can take considerable time, but it does work. Every step you take in this direction will yield an improvement.

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/ask-steve-staying-conscious-while-under-attack/

slip:4usebo24.

Self-improvement is an exercise in lifting oneself up by the bootstraps; Quite impossible and quite necessary.

ɕ

Action’s ecstasy

August 15, 2018

Action’s ecstasy is instantaneous and compounding: even if for the millionth time, it works its magic. Its trigger is sure: All you do is peel your ass off the bottom of whatever hole you’re in, and climb.

~ Bryan Ward from, http://www.thirdwayman.com/articles/the-1-drug-for-dads/

slip:4utiai6.

I can vouch for the potentcy of this drug. And it’s method of action is clear: With each small action which demonstrates one can affect one’s environment, the pattern of learned helplessness is broken.

ɕ

slip:4a98.

The kind of training I need

August 5, 2018

The truth is that if you can push into the discomfort, with love, and keep going … it’ll be an amazing breakthrough for you, an opening up of your habitual patterns. It’ll be a place of growth, of learning, of tremendous change. This is the kind of training that you need to put yourself in if you want to grow. Not a meditation retreat, necessarily, but any kind of practice that makes you want to retreat. It doesn’t have to be hardcore, just something that causes you to be uncomfortable, that causes your old habitual patterns to come up.

~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/purposeful/

slip:4uzepu1.

Leo’s Zen Habits has helped me tremendously over the years. His was one of the first useful sites I found about 10 years ago when I started changing my life. The idea that hard work– not a retreat per se, but anything that makes you want to retreat– is exactly what I need to work on, is one of the pillars upon which I began rebuilding. When things start to crack– when I feel my grip on my reasonable demeanor slipping– it’s this idea which I try to pull up.

ɕ

The power of now

August 2, 2018

This shift in thinking produced a significant shift in my priorities. I began focusing more of my energy on improving the quality of my present reality instead of projecting all those improvements into the realm of someday. I started asking questions like, “How can I experience more joy in this very moment?”

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/the-power-of-now/

slip:4usebo25.

Steve’s writing is probably an acquired taste — some of it I’m still not swallowing. But this one was well worth the read; Probably well-worth a re-read too. ;)

ɕ

Status update July 2018

July 11, 2018

(Part 65 of 72 in series, My Journey)

I’m not quite ready to publish scantily-clad selfies… so I left my socks on. I’ve a target weight in mind which corresponds to 20-year-old-me and a good photo from 1991.

Meanwhile…

This is the least I have weighed in 20 years. About 55 pounds (25kg!) lighter than 2008.

A visiting Finn mowed my lawn for me yesterday, and so I had time for one last run on this continent before I leave for a triple-stop Parkour trip in about twelve hours.

The graph is a little odd because I didn’t stop the tracking immediately, so there’s a huge bar for the last split (not shown.) It’s a lollipop route, so the 11-minute split is up the slight hill which I ran down at ~9-minute pace. The whole run came in about 9:33, which is right on the fastest I’ve ever run this. This time was much more uniform in pace than the last time I ran this.

Why do I post this stuff? Because whomever you are, whereever you are in your physical fitness (or complete lack thereof), you can simply do what I did: Start where you are.

ɕ

That royal road to the physical and mental derangement of mankind

June 11, 2018

And here I would like to add a word of warning to those I am trying to help, for a study of the letters in which the writers tell of experiencing difficulty in understanding, show signs of having been written after a quick reading rather than a close and careful study of the subject matter. I read recently an article suggesting that people should practise reading quickly, although the habit of too quick reading in which understanding becomes dominated by speed — that royal road to the physical and mental derangement of mankind — is an only too common failing today. This is only one example of the habit of too quick reaction to stimuli in general, and to its prevalence may be traced most of the misunderstandings, misconception and misdirecrion of effort manifested by the great majority of people today in conducting matters relating to the body politic.

~ F Matthias Alexander, in the 1941 preface to new edition of “The Use of the Self”, https://www.librarything.com/work/181654

There is nothing new under the sun.

ɕ


Sleep smarter

June 6, 2018

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has now classified overnight shift work as a Group 2A carcinogen. This means that staying up late repeatedly, and working overnight, is a strong enough cancer-causing agent to be lumped in with lead exposure and UVA radiation. That might sound crazy, but there s now a ton of scientific data showing exactly how this happens.

~ Shawn Stevenson, pg 43 of Sleep Smarter, https://www.librarything.com/work/17512525/150336148

Shift work that involves circadian disruption? Carcinogen.

A while back I wrote a piece on Sleep. It turned into three parts and after writing it, I felt I had only scratched the surface. Then I stumbled over this book.

I read the book and it’s really good! I blasted through it agreeing all the way. If you know everything about sleep, you’ll still enjoy seeing it all laid out in an approachable fashion. If you have NOT YET MASTERED SLEEP — wait, what is wrong with you?! Sleep is the single most important thing in your life. It is the activity you spend the most aggregated time doing. Remind me why you have not spent time studying sleep and improving yours?

ɕ

Social conditioning

May 13, 2018

If we support a foreign war or oppose it, it’s because of what effect it’s having on us, either individually or collectively. Our soldiers are dying. Our President is making us look bad. Our corporations are manipulating us. Our national debt is out of control. My taxes might go up. My budget might be stretched. My family member might be killed. We aren’t encouraged to consider such situations from the viewpoint of planet earth as a whole, or how our actions today might affect future generations. We perceive each other as separate and distinct individuals as opposed to cells in the same body.

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/03/what-lies-beyond-the-haze-of-social-conditioning/

slip:4usebo6.

This isn’t about “us” versus “them. It’s about “I”. How do I see my world? How do I see myself? Have I been conditioned? (duh. Of course I have.) Now that I’ve discovered I have a brain, do I like how I’ve been conditioned?

…oh sorry, got to talking to myself there.

ɕ

Arrogance

May 7, 2018

If you want to accelerate your rate of personal growth, work on becoming as honest as possible, both with yourself and others. The more honest you become, the more accurate will be your model of reality. And this will dramatically improve the success rate of your decisions and actions. Overconfidence and underconfidence are equally problematic, so strive for accuracy instead.

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/02/the-three-bears-arrogance-timidity-honesty/

slip:4usebo8.

Certainly there is a time and place for emotions. (Appropriate emotions of course.) But my experience is that any time my emotions, or my beliefs get a hold of the steering wheel things veer badly. I do much better when I use my brain to think things through, sort wheat from the chaff, and make plans. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I sure know where I came from.

ɕ

Origin story

May 6, 2018

“I should lose weight. Specifically, I should lose some of this fat. …actually, a lot of this fat.”

Since I began my health tracking grids I had been regularly tracking my weight, building the habit of stepping on the scale every day. I’ve read several opinions that this is a bad idea. Because one’s weight can fluctuate significantly day-to-day, daily weighing can lead to “fear of the scale” and stress. I disagree. After stepping on the scale every day for about 10 years, it is now simply something I do. The scale shows me a number and I write it down.

One day I started reading more about physiology. How your body composition changes. How a strength building session increases muscle mass (duh) and that can make your weight increase in the short term. Suddenly, the scale going up can be a good thing.

…and then I wondered, “how much should I optimally weigh?”

http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2016/10/virtual-paleo-summit-video-what-is-your.html

slip:4ubovi1.

At the time I began this “waist/weight ratio project,” I weighed about 230 pounds and the “male, 5 feet 11 inches tall” medical guideline is . . . 175 pounds. What?! I would be ecstatic if I weighted 220. I’m not sure what I would do if I weighed even 215— I’d probably fall down in a stiff breeze.

So how exactly should one “optimize” weight? Why should I select any specific weight target? Why 175 (as medically recommended,) or 220 (college body!). What if my weight isn’t changing as I make healthy improvements– how do I track that? I began to think perhaps I should optimize health markers: Blood sugar regulation, inflammation markers, and triglycerides, and that is far more complicated than “step on the scale.”

Waist-to-weight ratio

One day, I read the following article. It’s deceptively short, but quite complicated and subtle. You should go read this very carefully before continuing.

http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/search/label/waist-to-weight%20ratio

slip:4ubose1.

ɕ

A terrible mistake

May 3, 2018

Suddenly, a decision I hadn’t even been aware I had made – giving up the thrill of movement for movement’s sake – seemed like a terrible mistake. I felt the same as if I had thrown out my entire music collection by accident.

~ Julie Angel from, http://julieangel.com/be-brave/

I completely agree with this sentiment. By the time I realized how much I had given up, it was far too late for me to recover what I had lost. These days everyone says complementary things about how much I’ve changed, or how well I’m doing. All I’m thinking is, “if only I hadn’t . . .”

ɕ

Vast willpower is, well, not one of my powers

April 28, 2018

I dunno. But I don’t think of myself as working hard at any of the things I am good at, in the sense of “exerting vast willpower to force myself kicking and screaming to do them”. It’s possible I do work hard, and that an outside observer would accuse me of eliding how hard I work, but it’s not a conscious elision and I don’t feel that way from the inside.

~ Scott Alexander from, http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/

slip:4usate1.

True story:

Long ago, I worked with a boy who was dating a girl. Boy goes to girl’s house for a dinner with her parents. Turns out that the girl’s father is a professor at College. The boy mentions he has a co-worker who went to that College, and mentions my name. Girl’s father says, “Oh! Craig was one of my students… He could have done well if he had applied himself.” Turns out father was one of the professors in my major. I had many classes with him, and he went on to be Department Head for a while. So he did, in fact, know me well.

I didn’t do the bare minimum. But to be fair to that professor, I didn’t really work super-hard either.

It was all, more or less, easy.

What would have been hard, would have been being in the Arts college and trying to do art-type-things. Hell, I would NEVER have even gotten accepted into the Arts college at that same university.

What was hard for me? I took a literature survey class once — ONCE. I took a journalism course… that was so hard I think I hallucinated most of it(*). I spent years trying to learn to play the piano, and the guitar– fail. And, I’m out of superlatives, but losing fat is really hard for me. And, controlling my disfunctional relationship with food is really REALLY hard. Also, languages are hard — I’ve been trying to stuff French into my head for 5 years now…

So:

That thing you’re doing that you find easy? …I’m — or someone else, you get the point — thinking, “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?!”

(*) On the other hand, it was the only course my now-wife and I were ever in together, so while I worked very hard, I was probably a little distracted.

ɕ

Too grandiose an aspiration

April 27, 2018

To be sure, understanding the whole of the universe seems like too grandiose an aspiration when we are continually struggling to understand the tiny subset of the universe that is ourselves.

~ Maria Popova from, https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/05/carl-sagan-jonathan-cott-rolling-stone-interview/

slip:4ubaca1.

As with many things Maria Popova creates, anything I add would simply detract. Click. Thank me later.

ɕ

What to do with your life?

April 26, 2018

If you’ve read this much without turning away, then your awareness is already too high for you to be happy living like the sleeping masses. It’s time to wake up. The bright light will hurt your eyes at first, even make your eyes water, but you’ll get used to it. And then you’ll receive your own high-powered awareness flashlight. And I have to tell you that it’s oodles of fun shining that thing in people’s eyes when they least suspect it…

~ Steve Pavlina from, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/02/deciding-what-to-do-with-your-life/

slip:4usebo9.

If you are seeking entertainment instead of education… wake up!
If you frequently say, “I have to…” … wake up!
If you can no longer read… wake up!
If you can no longer write… wake up!
If you can no longer move… wake up!

( …remember that comment I made a few days ago about the line? )

ɕ