August 2016 – Page 2 – Francis Cortez

Magic: The Gathering R&D Principles

Netflix has a documentary about Magic: The Gathering. It’s a great look at the history and current state of MTG. I enjoyed the look at Wizards of the Coast, where the sausage is made. One clip shows a poster with their principles for R&D (clear image on the MTG Tumblr):

We are the stewards of Magic: We want Magic to last forever and be better tomorrow than it is today

We are passionate about Magic: We love Magic. We love playing, talking about it, and reading about it

We believe Magic makes a difference: We cherish that Magic is a meaningful part of people’s lives

We focus on growing Magic’s Audience: We want to remove obstacles to enjoying Magic

We believe in discovery, surprise, and strategy: Magic is a game of exploration, and we believe providing depth is essential.

We listen: We involve and engage our community in what we do.

We improve: We believe in perfecting our processes, our games, and ourselves.

We collaborate: Teams are the basic building blocks of our processes.

We debate: We believe vigorous and constructive disagreement is the most efficient way to discover the best ideas.

We are inclusive and respectful: We never dismiss viewpoints that are different from our own.

We expect greatness: We want teammates who embrace the responsibility of making Magic.

That’s great. I tried picking a few out to see how I can apply them to building this blog up:

We improve

I’ll build systems and processes to focus on writing.

We are passionate about Magic

I’ll write about things I’m passionate about.

We focus on growing Magic’s audience

I’ll work toward creating content that makes people think, makes people laugh, or makes people feel deeply (stolen from the principles Jimmy V lays out in my favorite speech ever). Someday I’ll write things that do all of those things.

10% Happier

In 10% Happier, Dan Harris¹ tells the story of how he became a regular meditator. He opens by saying his preferred title was “The Voice in my Head is an Asshole”. The best thing about the book is that Harris was probably more skeptical about meditation than most people.

If you told me when I first arrived in New York City, when I started working in network news, that I’d be using meditation to defang the voice in my head, or that I would ever write a whole book about it, I would’ve laughed at you.

Until recently, I thought of meditation as the exclude province of bearded swamis, unwashed hippies, and fans of John Tesh music.

Just in the past couple years since the book was released, meditation has taken further steps toward mainstream. Still, many people who could get the most benefit from meditation dismiss it as “not for them”. Their reasons are the same as Harris’s:

Moreover, since I have the attention span of a six month old yellow lab, I figured it was something I could never do anyway. I assumed, given the constant looping, buzzing, and fizzing of my thoughts, that clearing my mind wasn’t an option.

A lot of times, the busiest knowledge workers (a term I took from Cal Newport—you might be a knowledge worker² if most of your day is spent at a desk) got so busy by chasing productivity. Those tips and tricks work, and you can do things faster and fit work into smaller spaces, jamming every nook and cranny of the day. There’s no room for ten minutes of seeming inactivity.

What really sold me is the idea that it’s an investment. Time exercising is rarely questioned. We understand the benefits go beyond the time in the gym. The arguments come through choosing what’s best during that time.

So you invest twenty minutes into meditation and reap the benefits through the other hours in the day.

Awful metaphor attempt: let’s start with the jar from that parable about the jar. Filled with rocks and pebbles and sand. Now let’s say the rocks and pebbles and sand are being shot at you. You’ll grab what you can and stuff it in the jar. Meditation lets you practice slowing that down so you can pick and choose what should go in the jar in the first place.

Unconvinced? I would be too at this point. Let’s move on.

Maybe you left this page, went to a better source with more persuasive reasoning for meditation, then you closed that tab and realized this page was still up. Then just maybe you’d give this a glance to see if I had anything on how to meditate. You’re in luck, Harris’s brief explanation of how to meditate is as good as any I’ve read:

Whenever your attention wanders just forgive yourself and gently come back to the breath. You don’t need to clear the mind of all thinking, that’s pretty much impossible. True, when you are focused on the feeling of your breath, the chatter will momentarily cease. But this won’t last too long.

The whole game is to catch your mind wandering and then come back to the breath over and over again.

It’s simple, but like many simple things, it isn’t easy. Eat less and workout more while you’re at it. And like many things that aren’t easy, it’s worth it.

Despite its difficulties, though, meditation did offer something huge: an actual method for shutting down the monkey mind, if only for a moment. It was like tricking the furry little gibbon, distracting it with something shiny so it would sit still.

If you practice sitting still, the monkey mind will do the same.

Harris is the best narrator I’ve heard in an audiobook. He’s a news anchor that’s worked at the top level. It was one of the first audiobooks I listened to. ↩︎
You might be a redneck knowledge worker if… the sticker on your Aeron chair says “My other chair’s in a John Deere”. You also might be working for a startup in 1999, where these jokes would be more comfortable bombing. ↩︎

Only emotion endures

“Only emotion endures.” — Ezra Pound

I heard this quote and it made me think of the idea that our memories are faulty in details, but pretty good for remembering feelings.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”— Maya Angelou

Maybe you’ve read a few of my posts and you see that I’m starting with profound quotes. “Maybe he won’t be writing about another podcast he listened to that day.” Wrong. Okay, well maybe it won’t be from the Tim Ferriss Show. Wrong.

I heard the Ezra Pound quote on a Tim Ferriss Show episode with Mike Birbiglia. He says that he keeps mind writing slogans around to remind him what’s important when writing. It’s easy to get caught up trying to make a cultural reference work in a scene. A lot of those things go away and the work won’t stand the test of time:

What is this about? It’s about friends. It’s about a group of friends coping with what it’s like to be in their 30s and confront the idea that they might not be successful in their life the way they thought they would be successful in life. Whenever it would veer into something that was like a cultural reference I would be like no no, let’s pull it back into it’s about friends.

That works now. If it’s good, people will relate a decade from now. Which reminds me of something Simon Rich said on the James Altucher Show about writing with emotions in mind:

The way I try to write about it is by coming up with a very high stakes usually supernatural premise which will get across how extreme that emotion feels. I try to write about emotions that I’ve experienced, not in the way that they actually occurred, but in the way that they felt.

A couple days ago I wrote that his stories are somehow both absurd and completely relatable. That somehow is by starting with something relatable…

When you meet somebody knew and it goes well, that’s a pretty low stakes, boring story. But when you’re in it, when you’re living in it, it feels about as high stakes as anything can be.

… and magnifying the emotions with the power of absurdness:

So that’s why that character gets a congratulatory call from the president, because that’s how it feels, to him.

This marks the end another post. Someone pour the Gatorade on me.

You are a Writer

In You are a Writer, Jeff Goins explains why you should call yourself a writer. He then explains the area to make sure you’re backing up your words.

I’ve always and still do shy away from titles. There’s still a tiny twinge when I say I’m a designer. I felt it just now. This might have to do with having worked at a fashion company. “Designer” with nothing else in front meant you were designing clothes—which was the core business.

I think I’d all out cringe if I said I’m a writer. But I enjoyed all the guidance on walking the walk. If I’m learning anything in this 100 days, 100 posts project, it’s learning how to finish. Jeff writes about finishing:

Cancel all backup plans, pick a project, and move forward. It doesn’t matter what you pick. Maybe it’s a book, an article, or whatever. Write it. And finish it. Because once you learn how to finish, you’ll be able to start again. You’ll start another great project and finish it. And another. And another.

In the first few weeks of this project, I’d get almost to the end of a post but didn’t want to do the grunt work. With a list of future post ideas, it was easy to start working on the next post. That’s also more fun.

Something else I need to improve on is editing. I knew that from the start of this project, and I still haven’t improved as much as I want here. Jeff talks about the importance of editing:

Let’s face it: The “genius” stuff happens in the editing process. Most successful writers go through a tedious process of drafting and shaping their content to get something worth sharing. How do they do this? They write every day. They write a thousand terrible words to find a hundred words worth using. They share their work with a close friend. They edit, tweak, and then ship. But they have to have something to start the process with. And so do you.

I’m getting pretty good at generating a bunch of raw material. I can get to two crappy pages faster, but they’re still crappy pages. Still, it’s improvement. If I can get the marble at the quarry quicker than I’ll have more chances to practice chipping away at it to make shapes. Eventually I’ll learn to make statues.

One of the important things is getting to the quarry in the first place. Here’s Jeff on creating that raw material:

Commit to writing something—anything—today. Maybe it’s just a sentence or a title. But get it on paper (or screen). Write it just to get it out. Right. Now. You might have a nugget of something that was inspired at 3 a.m. But write free. Keep your fingers moving.

It might feel like a waste, but it works: Write more, so you can edit more. Starting with raw thoughts then slicing down your fluff to the core essentials is how you get to genius.

I’m also practicing showing up. Professionals show up. Not that my aim is to be a professional writer, but if I want to improve then I need to show up. Professionals do it in the open:

They practice in public. They show up, every day, without excuse or complaint (okay, maybe some complaint). They perform. They go to work. They stop stalling and playing around and actually get stuff done. Writing is no different. Look, it’s easy to dump words on a page and tuck it away in a drawer. But to be a real writer, you have to take some risks. You have to put your work out there. Throw it against the wall, and see if it sticks.

I’m getting better at throwing things against the wall every single day. Soon, and slowly, I’ll work on making things stick.

Book note on Spoiled Brats: Write lots of jokes

I finished reading Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich. (A couple weeks ago I finished The Last Girlfriend on Earth.) All of this was after listening to his appearance on The James Altucher show. James mentioned that he rarely laughs out loud while reading and Simon’s books got him laughing.

I laughed multiple times while reading The Last Girlfriend on Earth and the same thing happened reading Spoiled Brats. Each of the best stories from the books are available online at The New Yorker:

Unprotected: This is written from the perspective of a condom
Sell Out: A pickle-factory worker is brined in 1912 and pulled out a century later, where he gets to meet his great-great-great grandson.

The Last Girlfriend on Earth is about love and relationships. Spoiled Brats is mostly about destroying millennials. The stories are absurd and completely relatable. It’s an amazing combination that I imagine is difficult to pull off as a writer.

One of my favorite parts of Spoiled Brats was the interview at the end. (That interview happens to be online also.) He’s worked at a very very high level in professional comedy writing: SNL, Pixar, a weekly TV show, and of course these these short stories published in The New Yorker. It’s encouraging to see Simon say that what he does can be learned.

Even the most experimental abstract expressionists have to stretch a canvas, right? I mean, there’s a lot of technical busywork that goes into the construction of any creative medium. But it’s learnable. It’s not that hard. I’ve got about five or ten rules of thumb that I keep in my brain as I’m writing.

It’s encouraging because comedy is a field that people probably thinks comes naturally. Everyone has a few funny friends in mind and it just seems natural to them. But writing it down and working it over and over to make sure it’s funny to a wider audience is hard. You have to work at it:

I occasionally will suddenly have an idea out of nowhere—in the stereotypical Hollywood way, inspiration will strike—but that probably accounts for 5 or 10 percent of all my published work. The rest is the result of brute force.

He writes every day and generates a lot of material that doesn’t make it to the final piece:

How many pages do you think you wrote that didn’t end up in the final piece?

Oh, hundreds. But that’s typical for me. I throw out most of what I write. But percentage-wise, what I kept for “Sell Out” was definitely the lowest.

Like many other crafts, you create and create and most of it gets tossed until you’re left with something good.

I’m writing 100 posts in 100 days—I don’t expect any to be good yet. A few feel okay. And that’s fine, as long as I’m improving. Compared to when I started, I’m more disciplined and actually finish posts before starting new ones. I learned how important this was to make sure I don’t get buried in unfinished drafts.

Sunday Journal Issue 05

Where I write about writing.

Saturday — August 6: The past couple weeks involved a lot of social events that I was happy to put aside writing for. I was falling behind but I didn’t worry too much about getting in too deep a hole to write myself out of. I knew the upcoming weekend and week would be pretty free. Slowly I’ve settled on a routine that’s working. I can finish posts.

I’m still keeping my goal of 100 posts in 100 days, ending on August 23rd. Today was one of the big catch up days. I worked through a backlog of posts that were in (very) rough draft states and finished them.

Sunday — August 7

9:40 AM: Yesterday was really good so I want to try to get similar results today to make sure I can reach 100 posts. Right now, I just came back from the laundromat and put clothes in the washer. It’s been a couple years since I washed my own clothes in New York. Since I’m starting meditation, washing my own clothes will probably bring me a step closer to transforming into a beam of energy.

This morning I finished Simon Rich’s Spoiled Brats. A few weeks ago I also finished The Last Girlfriend on Earth. I’ll write a book note post on this today. Particularly on an interview at the end of Spoiled Brats that I thought was one of the best parts of the book that also happens to be from an online interview. He gives some thoughts on writing, like how he started taking writing seriously:

But I think it sort of shifted around when I was 17. That’s when I started writing every single day, whether or not I had an idea. Until then, I would only sit down and write a story if one occurred to me, and then I started to wake up every single day and write for a few hours whether or not I had anything worthwhile to say.

Along with that book notes post, here are the other things I want to finish today¹:

Friday Links Issue 7: I picked the links out and have written a few passages. This is probably about halfway finished.
Japan trip – More as seen on: It’s the last of the ten posts I wanted to write about my trip to Japan. It’s been sitting in my drafts, haunting me.
Vomit draft: I was listening to Mike Brubiglia on the Tim Ferriss podcast and they talk about the “vomit draft”. ~~Where people take turns selecting their favorite vomits to build a team of best vomits~~. Of course, it’s another name for two crappy pages and other phrases people use. I always find it interesting how different writers approach their first drafts.
*Book note #3 on *Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV: I’ve written a couple so far and I want to finish the book and write a third post today.

And I also have the rest of this post to write.

10:43 AM: I finished the post about the Japan trip: More as seen on TV. Back to the laundromat to take the clothes out of the dryer and fold them.

11:58 AM: Jesus that took long. Took clothes out, folded, brought them home, put them away. I’ll stick to dropping off my laundry and I’ll let my brother know I won’t be entering the energy stream after all.

12:55 PM: Ordered food and banked on the delivery taking at least 45 minutes to get some writing in. Turned Focus@Will on, started a 25-minute timer, started writing. Then a couple minutes in, the door buzzer went off. Time to eat.

Actually. Hot soup should stay hot for a good amount of time. I’ll power through this time block.

Post-time block update: That post was more complete than I thought and I finished it — Friday Links Issue 07: Write themselves.

Now time to eat.

9:55 PM: I ate, then I napped for a very long time. I eventually got up and went to The Bean to read more of Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV. I’m really enjoying being more deliberate about reading. I wrote and finished a post—Book note on Comedy Writing: Semi-scripted.

Including this post, I’ll have finished four posts today. (I didn’t get around to finishing writing about the “vomit draft”.)

I still have some drafts that are more than halfway done, so finishing 2-3 posts in the next few days should be possible.

100 posts in 100 days, still on track.

If the links are working on the posts, then I actually did finish the post today. ↩

Friday Links Issue 07a: Write themselves

Somewhere inside, I partially expected these posts to write themselves. Save a link. Grab an excerpt. Write a paragraph on the train. Repeat throughout the week. The key to that system is following that system. I guess that’s the key to any system.

Guide to mindfulness and meditation — meditationSHIFT

I found this on reddit while reading comments about Headspace. Some people think apps or even guided meditation itself isn’t the way to start. (I’ll leave a rant about people that are vehemently against Headspace in the footnotes¹.)

If you are an athlete, you practice so you can perform well in the game. “Practice” is meditation. “Performing” is mindfulness. “The game” is daily life.

I’ve told a few friends that I’m trying out meditation. I told my brother I’m beginning my journey and I’ll see him when he re-joins the mana stream with me.

I’m overcoming the idea that meditation is sitting in a room doing nothing. Slowly. I’m not sure I believed myself the first couple sessions. But then I noticed how focused I was in the following hours. It’s practice.

One of the better analogies I read related it to exercise. You don’t just say you’ll start exercising regularly then quit after three sessions and say it isn’t for you.

Ok plenty of people do that. Couch to n/m I’m OK.

Still, most people that quit exercising understand there would be benefits if they kept it up. It takes more than a few sessions to get used to and then more than a few to see the benefits.

How to Think About Your Career — Julie Zhuo

I was particularly interested in Julie describing her affirmations:

Many years ago, when I was frustrated by all the things I struggled with and felt unequipped or scared to do in my job, I started a list of what I wished a future me would one day be able to waltz in and easily accomplish. This list is titled One Day, I will…

She’s kept her list updated through the years. Earlier ones, like being comfortable speaking in bigger meetings, are complete. These are some incomplete items she has:

Succinctly and clearly be able to make the point I want to make in 3 bullets.

Regularly be able to weave compelling stories and analogies into verbal explanations.

Host large events where people have fun and I am not really stressed out.

Julie’s better able to explain her goals than me. I’d like to be succinct and clear but it’d take me a page to explain that. And I’d also like to be a better storyteller. I’ll try to do that by following her advice in her post “Write in 2016”.

Set a writing goal that is purely about the mechanical act of doing. Maybe, like me, it’s Hit the publish button every third Tuesday, Maybe it’s Write 3 journal entries a week. Or maybe it’s Write 500 words a day. (In case you wonder how all your favorite authors complete their novels, I have it on good information that pretty much all of them do it via daily word-count/time-spent-writing goals.)

One post each day.

List of Tips from The Pragmatic Programmer

It’s a giant list of directives for programmers to follow. I’m interested in how some of them can apply to the crafts I’m pursuing: design (at work) and writing (here).

Prototype to Learn: Prototyping is a learning experience. Its value lies not in the code you produce, but in the lessons you learn.

Prototyping is pretty embedded in design culture. As for writing, I’d like to write longer pieces and tell better stories. Each of these daily posts acts as a prototype to learn from. I’ll see what I find the most value writing about and then I can go deeper on that.

It’s Both What You Say and the Way You Say It: There’s no point in having great ideas if you don’t communicate them effectively.

I’m working on communicating effectively, but how do I start thinking about those great ideas? Reading more and writing more seem like good steps to get there. We’ll see.

Don’t Live with Broken Windows: Fix bad designs, wrong decisions, and poor code when you see them.

On the blog side, there are some things I still need to fix. Typography is a mess right now. On the writing side, I’ve done a pretty good job of fixing my blog workflow so I can focus on writing.

Finish What You Start: Where possible, the routine or object that allocates a resource should be responsible for deallocating it.

One major form of a broken window with writing is the unfinished draft. Or the collection of them. Really tracking things in a spreadsheet made a big difference. I have a good sense of which unfinished drafts will actually be finished. Then I can jump in and finish them up if I have extra time in a day.

Happiness Formula (2007) — Scott Adams

Scott Adams talks about writing a book about happiness:

On page one would be this top formula.

Happiness = health + money + social life + meaning

The rest of the book would be nested formulas that further explain each component of happiness. For example…

Health = sleep + diet + exercise

And then down another level…

Sleep = schedule + technique

And down another level until it starts getting practical…

Sleep Technique = consistent bedtime and waking time + no reading or TV in bed + no booze or caffeine…

And so on.

He ended up pretty much writing that book and releasing How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big in 2013². His formula didn’t change much — here it is in a New York Post article:

To get to where you want to be, try this sequence: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself). And reduce daily decisions to routine.

Take care of yourself, practice affirmations, continually learn things, help others, and use systems where you can to do all of these things.

Headspace appears to be polarizing. Some people disagree with people making money (?) creating a product that teaches meditation principles. And the odd thing in those cases is one of their points is that Andy Puddicombe, Headspace’s founder, is already rich so he shouldn’t “cash-in” on meditation. It’s a great product. I’m actually meditating. There’s a part of the app that shows how many people are currently using Headspace. I’ve usually seen it around 27,000. It’s a great onboarding to meditation. ↩
I’ll write notes on this before my 100 posts are complete. It was one of the first books I read where I really actively applied learnings from. ↩

Beginning meditation

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m giving meditation another shot. I first really got interested in actually meditating after listening to the 10% Happier audiobook.

10% Happier by Dan Harris

I’m listening to it again this week. As a meta point, it’s the best narrated audiobook I’ve listened to. It also happened to be one of my first Audible purchases. I mistakenly thought all audiobooks were of that quality. Dan Harris speaks for a living at a very high level.

I’m bookmarking and writing notes as I listen this time around. His perspective is shared by a lot of others. He was skeptical of meditation and waded through different types and communities to come find a practice that works.

Headspace

I’m going through the introductory Take 10 series on Headspace. Ten minutes for ten days. I tried it last year, fell asleep the first day, and quit after the second. This time I’m acknowledging that meditation needs to be practiced.

I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work to start this year and it made me think about how uneasy we are with being bored these days. Boredom can’t go where our phones go. The same goes with focus. Cal Newport talks about is practicing focus so that you can focus deeply on whatever problem you’re working on.

I believe in growth mindsets and deliberate practice. If meditation can be practiced, then I’ll can approach it that way. 10 minutes each day.

I used to think: Time meditating is literally doing nothing. Is that better spent elsewhere?

The answer: Probably. That’s if you think time meditating really is literally doing nothing.

This time around, I’m thinking about it as brain training. People don’t question the benefits of exercise and the benefits outside of the actual time spent working out. I’m hoping meditation will be similar. With 10 or 20 minutes every day, I’ll see the benefits during the entire rest of the day.

Early session impressions

I’m improving on focusing on single tasks. I tried time blocking in the past. Focusing for 25 minutes shouldn’t be hard. Still, I’d end many sessions with the timer ringing and me realizing I trailed off into the internet somewhere in the last few minutes of the work session.

It’s been really helpful on days when I didn’t have enough sleep the night before. Healthwise, it’d be a trap to think it’s really making up for lost sleep. But it’ll be a good tool to have if it can make those days feel less zombie-like.

This week of focus has been great. If it’s from some kind of placebo effect¹, that’s fine. If meditating makes me think meditating works, then, I mean, that’s enough. it’s literally all in the mind.

The brain is weird.

Creating a placebo for meditation for meditation studies has its own complications. ↩

Book note on Originals

In Originals, Adam Grant talks about creating many ideas to get to the good ideas¹:

“Original thinkers,” Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes, “will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas—especially novel ideas.”

It reminded me of the story of the pottery class being graded either on 1.) quantity of completed pieces or 2.) quality of a single final piece. I don’t know where I originally read it. It might have been from Jason Kottke or Derek Sivers.

My best guess, though is that I read it on Coding Horror. Jeff Atwood blogged about the story from the book Art & Fear. Digging into his other posts, he gives some advice on blogging consistently:

My schedule was six posts per week, and I kept jabbing, kept shipping, kept firing. Not every post was that great, but I invested a reasonable effort in each one. Every time I wrote, I got a little better at writing.

As for subjects, Jeff tried to avoid blogging about blogging:

I’ve avoided the incestuous nature of blogging about blogging until now […]

I haven’t!

Thinking of it as a single quantity/quality scale doesn’t quite work. I can’t arbitrarily move to the quality end—I’m not a good enough writer. More time spent on the quantity side lets me slowly get further on the quality side.

There’s a better metaphor, but feel free to read this bad one. Let’s say you arrive at a canyon. One side is quantity and the other is quality. At first you spend most of your time in the quantity end to gather materials. Once in a while, you’ll build part of the bridge out toward quality. And you can get further and further out to the quality side, but it still requires quantity. As the bridge goes out, you can then pick and choose exactly where you want to spend your time.

I’ll continue chopping trees down on this side of the canyon.

This excerpt is pretty much a quote from someone else. ↩

Per Se

Compared to Brooklyn Fare: My other 3-star Michelin experience was at Brooklyn Fare. It’s sort of like comparing apples and oranges. But like very expensive apples and oranges you would gift in Japan. I mean, if you couldn’t compare apples and oranges then people wouldn’t have favorite fruits.

I really enjoyed both. Per Se had more traditional fare.

I always wanted to go to French Laundry. I was saving up to go in 2008 when I had an internship at IBM in San Jose. Then I just never went.

That means when I moved to New York, I always wanted to go to Per Se. I just never went. It was nice to get to Per Se. (My girlfriend took me for my birthday—no need for me to save up this time.)

Oysters and Pearls were amazing. Here are some pictures of that and some other dishes:

They close out with dessert. A lot of it.

It’s the best service I’ve had. One of the waitresses described their movement as “the Per Se dance”. The job seems to be some mixture of not being noticed most of the time and looking great when you are noticed.

It’s not stuffy in there at all. It’s great. They seem to understand it’s a special occasion for many people and help to make it feel special.

One of the best meals of my life.

Why didn't I start doing this sooner — HN

I was reading an HN thread about “why didn’t I start doing this sooner?” It seems like these were popular:

Meditation
Fitness
Nutrition
Sleep

I’ve been pretty good about the last three in the past (except meditation). Lately I’ve let each slip a little bit and I can feel it. My energy’s not where I want it to be.

Here are the steps I’m taking to get my mind and body back in shape. It’s not ideal trying to establish multiple habits at the same time. However, I’ve worked out consistently before, eaten clean before, and had good sleep hygiene before. It’ll be as simple as hopping back on three wagons at once.

Fitness: Compound weights in the morning. Otherwise, follow the couch to 5K program. 3 miles is pretty much the upper limit for the amount of cardio I’d want to do. Cardio makes me feel good in the euphoria sense. Weightlifting makes me feel accomplished. Running will be as much for the mental benefit ast it is the physical. (Weightlifting seems better for physical health. Aesthetics are probably 90% in the kitchen and 0% on Seamless.)

Nutrition: Speaking of. I’m going to eat and drink less. Again, I know what’s worked for me in the past. I know what to do here, I just need to execute.

Sleep: I’ll aim to work out in the morning. During the day, I’ll lower my caffeine intake. At night, I’ll swap screens for blue blockers earlier. Then spray or drink magnesium. And read fiction.

Then there’s a fourth wagon that’s currently a bunch of plywood right now. I’ll learn how to meditate. I’ll start with Headspace. I listened to 10% Happier last year, which got rid of my skepticism of meditation. Now it’s time to actually apply it.

Oh yeah, ‘writing regularly’ showed up in a few responses. Gladly I can say it’s something I currently do which I’ll continue.