If someone asks you a question, think to yourself about the quality of the question.
If it’s of poor quality, it’s best to respond with a question of your own.
Terrible questions will make your answer terrible. Don’t play that game: work your way to a good question instead.
I find this helpful in customer support, conversation, debate, and even wrangling with my stupid internal thoughts.
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I’m better about getting done during the day most of the things I must do.
At least, I’m better now than I was a year ago.
I’m still really bad about improving myself, working on side projects, or in general making use of my personal time in a way that makes me proud. There’s a lot more sitting on the couch being tired than I’d like.
It seems like most folks (at least folks with kids) combat this one of two ways: waking up early or staying up late.
If you’ve intentionally ever started waking up earlier or staying up later to work on something – I’d love to hear your story. Or hell, hear someone else’s story you know about. Please leave stories, advice, or links in the comments?
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My favorite blogger, Mr. Money Mustache, has been a major force in my life since 2011. He doesn’t post as often as he did in that first year, but MMM still appears from time to time and I always find it valuable. Most recently, he made a splash on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
In that episode he provided one of the most brilliant rules of thumb I’ve ever heard. In regards to what he thinks about when making a purchase:
And finally, I ask myself “Is this removing a negative in my life?” Because it’s pretty well studied that happiness is not very much affected by adding positives to your life. It’s mostly – especially in a rich world environment like we live – it’s mostly accomplished by removing things that are a strong negative to everyday.
You can hear this part of the discussion around [46:33] in the episode.
What a great bit of guidance! If you’re solving a problem, and buying a thing is the best way to solve that problem, that purchase has a much better chance of contributing to your happiness. If you’re purchasing something because you’re counting on the purchase to make you happier you’ll always be wanting.
MMM explains this principle more deeply here: A Lifetime of Riches – Is it as Simple as a Few Habits?
But that rule alone someone could add to every single purchase: am I removing a negative or adding a positive? How much spending could you avoid if you followed that as much as possible? You don’t even need to aspire to greater net worth to find value in that, only greater happiness.
Photo credit: cadencrawford on flickr
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Time is a limited resource. We all get only 21 days a week.
How great it’d be if we had a full month of 100 days. Alas we are stuck with only 93 on a good month, only 84 in February.
Some suggestions to make the most of these limited days:
Inspired by Deep Work by Cal Newport and How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett.
Image by Nic of Little Visuals
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Yesterday I listened to a Planet Money episode called “Burnout.”
In that episode they play a clip from an interview with the psychologist that coined the phrase, Herbert Freudenberger. In it, Herbert says that he “[doesn’t] know how to have fun. [He doesn’t] know how to be readily joyful.”
It wasn’t depression, and it wasn’t really exhaustion, it was more that he was so focused and unrelentingly pushing himself with his work that his mind had forgotten on how to do anything else but work.
As soon as I heard that I identified with it. I’m doing more work than ever and I feel like I’m growing less than ever. I’m tired all the time and all I can think to do is chores, errands, more work, or crashing into bed. Even my leisure time feels like a series of chores. I’m not depressed – I keep waking up everyday and I’m working out and I’m checking so many damn boxes on so many damn lists.
But man, I’m really sick of it all. Like a drug addict watching their cigarette just burnout, I’m really just watching myself get older and tired and taking in that long journey to the middle.
And like they talk about in the episode – there’s really no one that takes this kind of thing seriously. It’s not a recognized problem. So it’s up to me to make my own way.
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Grace is starting to get mobile, but not fully crawling yet. She is fun to play with but her energy needs really wear on me when I’m on baby duty. We are trying to take advantage of opportunities to have others watch her when possible so that we can enjoy better the time we do spend with her and she gets the go-go-go she wants.
Joined the YMCA and it’s been a good call. Their facilities are conveniently located and well kept. I’m following Pavel Tsatsouline’s “Power to the People” program for strength, then following that with rowing and walking. On occasion I add some variety with kettlebells and olympic lifts. I’m getting stronger and I’m able to train many days in a row (which I could never do after sessions of CrossFit.) They also have childcare, so it’s an amazing day when Ber and I can both workout and have someone else watch the baby while we do it.
Working on the PHP Development track at Treehouse. I’ve never written any PHP outside of a WordPress environment so this is proving educational. It’s funny how many things I confuse as a being either a PHP thing or a WordPress thing because I’ve never really had to separate them.
Having a hard time at work. Really pushed for a goal from August to December and that didn’t work out as I had hoped. Call it ambition misplaced. I’m spending some time regrouping and gaining back core competencies that I wasn’t practicing during those months. Not sure what I’ll aim for once I’m back in the groove to avoid that kind of mistake again. I’ve had more interactions with customers this month than any other though, so that’s not time wasted.
Finished several books (see my previous posts.) I also have a review of American Gods by Neil Gaiman almost ready, just need to take a picture of the avid reader cat. Currently reading Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders.
Keep on keeping on.
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“God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.”
Dr. Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park (1993)
Ber and I watched Jurassic Park the other night and this may have been the first time I really heard this line from Dr. Malcom, played by Jeff Goldblum.
The chaos-obsessed man becomes horrified at the notion of an automated car guiding them through the park. And this is before anything bad happens!
Having worked in software long enough, this is now really funny to me.
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Ber and I hadn’t been so excited for a night out in a long time. Babysitter lined up and nerd cards at the ready, we raced to the fancy recliner seats to watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Spoilers ahead.
It’s like someone put together a role-playing game one-shot and in a surprise twist used the Star Wars system instead of D&D. “So a blind monk, his fighter friend, two rogues, a warforged and a pilot NPC are going on a linear quest.” Tell me I’m wrong. (I’m not wrong.)
And that’s not really a problem, I love D&D one-shots. But what it means is that you really can’t think to far into it. You need to put in your effort of enjoying the movie and it’ll be a freaking great time. That’s what I did.
If you’d rather hear the drag-it-out nitpicking, I recommend Hello Internet’s Rogue One Star Wars Christmas Special. What I want to provide is the optimist experience.
It felt dark, like Empire. But they ended with just enough a reminder that the good guys will win the next movie that it still felt like an adventure instead of a tragedy. Darth Vader’s fight sequence was worth the price of admission. CGI Tarkin was shocking not the worst CGI in the Star Wars universe (I’m looking at you Jabba the Hut in A New Hope: Special Edition.)
Alan Tudyk was so good as K-2SO I didn’t even realize it was him until after the fact. And really, his death was the only one that kinda hurt while I watched it. Loved that droid. Most of the other rebels were kinda jerks. Like everyone at that D&D one-shot cared way too much about the loot.
Chirrut and Baze were awesome. Leaving the movie Ber said she wants us to play a monk/fighter buddy duo just like them whenever we get to play D&D together. I would enjoy that thoroughly. I do think their talents were wasted as infantry on a beach, though. Maybe some novel will come out about them being badasses on Jedha before it got blown up.
Most importantly, they paced the movie to be exciting moment-to-moment. While the whole story seems kind of winding in retrospect, whatever was happening at the time seemed pretty cool and Star Wars-y. Unlike the prequels, where sure the overall timeline was respected but it was boring as all get out.
That’s what I feel about this movie: it’s entertaining as a Star Wars movie should be. I’ll rewatch it and not feel ashamed. I’ll discuss it and point at all my favorite bits. But I think the story it tells could’ve gone so many other ways. It’s best to just be happy it wasn’t bad.
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Alex "Gus" Gustafson 