Tangible Life
Live it for the Internet
A quote:
Never in history have lives been less lived, yet so well documented.
I saved this quote because it accurately distills my current outlook on how modern humans are living (or not living) their lives. I don’t remember where I saw it and I don’t remember if it included attribution. While the statement itself saddens me, the motivation it gives me is to ensure that I’m living mine to the fullest. Much of what we perceive from the documented life other humans are sharing is merely perception vs. a reflection of the reality of life.
The question becomes: Who are you when you’re not performing for someone else?
Find out and find yourself in the process.
YLW (October 2023)
Monthly follow-up from my Year of Living Without. October was no candy or ice cream.
It was a great idea to go without candy for October. I only failed two days (one being late on the night of the 31st after skimming a bit from the kid bags). I didn’t keep with the ice cream intention. I realized that my fear was overloading on candy (which seems like it’s around all month long vs. just at the end post Halloween).
I did declutter some, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped to during October. I’m carrying that one into November and letting it be the focus. With some new items inevitably making their way into the house in December, I’d love to have thinned things way down before that.
YLW (September 2023)
Monthly follow-up from my Year of Living Without. September was no hot showers.
Taking nothing but cold showers for a month has been one of the most interesting exercises so far this year. Honestly, it may be the best example of why I set out on this journey. No matter whether it was shower #3 or shower #30, each one came with the sudden breathtaking shock of feeling the cold water hit all of the most “sensitive receptor areas” of my body. After a minute or two, the shock wears off. You get used to it. I could feel the body heat coming off my body as I soaped up. I could feel it escaping through my head as I washed it. Each and every shower was a short experience of connecting with myself. Each and every shower, I looked forward to October 1st when I would have the comforting warm/hot water instead.
I’d do this again, maybe a few times a year, just for the sake of being comfortable with discomfort. Highly recommend.
October is focused on a few areas. I won’t be having any candy. I won’t be eating any ice cream. This seems like a good way to avoid some of the pre-Halloween temptations. I’ll still have cake (two of my kids have birthdays in October). I’ll also be doing some decluttering around the home and garage.
The Manument
Another gem from James Hoffmann:
My favorite moment in the video, that I can relate to comes as he describes using the steaming wand:
Lovely, glossy, silky milk. Pretty achievable with practice. I think this is a great wand to steam with. Very enjoyable, no complaints whatsoever, which for me feels like a rarity.
If I hit the lottery, a Manument might be the first thing I’d order as a gift to myself. Truly beautiful piece of machinery.
Feedback
I’m as interested as Gruber on the validity of this being a well-researched piece of journalism. This line from the original post that he also quotes is the one that I find most ludicrous.
Many companies, executive coaches and HR professionals are looking to erase the anxiety-inducing word from the corporate lexicon, and some are urging it be replaced by what they see as a gentler, more constructive word: “feedforward.”
With almost anything in history, the pendulum swings too far before it comes back to center.
The Only Part of Your Reputation to Worry About
I received the linked article via the great Daily Stoic email newsletter.
Joseph Addison in wrote the following in 1712 about Cato:
We can’t guarantee success, we can do something better, we can deserve it.
Ryan Holiday adds:
The same goes for reputations. Nothing we do can ensure we get the reputation we deserve, but we can deserve a good one. We don’t know whether people will recognize our honesty or hard work or grace under pressure, so we shouldn’t worry about it.
That feels about right.
YLW (August 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. August was no online shopping from my phone month
I may try to do another month doing without online shopping, but August was defintely not a success. I likely picked a bad month to try this, since school and after school sports, etc. kicking back up is not the ideal time for a parent of six to be attempting to add friction to online shopping. Getting an order in as quickly as possible for novels for class, soccer cleats that actually fit, etc. needs to happen on the spot, so the phone came out and the items came to the doorstep.
I still think it’s a great idea to attempt to increase the friction of consumption, so I’ll slot this one for another month in the future when it won’t cause chaos in my world to such a high degree.
September has already started with no hot showers, and I can say it’s interesting so far.
Bob Barker Dies at 99
Gruber and I are not far apart in age, and he nails the memory for when I spent time with Bob Barker (and Judge Wapner in the 10am - 11am ET slot right before):
If you’re of a certain age (mine), sick days home from school revolved around watching The Price Is Right at 11am.
YLW (July 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. July was a month of being without a goal of doing without
So July was a month spending time with my family and doing fun summer activities. I realized that some of my previous month exercises are still habits, while others felt like they weren’t as solid (I drank soda 2-3 times, just because I wanted the taste with certian foods). I didn’t shame myself afterwards, I just remembered that July was a more relaxed month in this overall scheme.
August was going to be no hot showers, however, I forgot we were in August and didn’t realize it until after my 2nd hot shower. I’ve decided to make August “no online shopping from my phone” month. It’s a little too convenient to buy something on Amazon someitmes when there’s a shopping cart in your pocket all the time. If I want to buy something, I’ll have to make my way to my computer or tablet, open up a web browser and do it the old fashioned way. This may seem like a silly differentiation, since I’m not saying I won’t buy anything online, but I think just the little bit of friction is what I’m actually going for in the process. We’ll see at the end of August how it went.
I’ll also be going back to more strict following of some of the other habits, not that many slipped in July.
River Ranch
The River Ranch program is laid out in a courtyard plan, which is formed by the main house, the guest wing, and the pool. The outer layer of the courtyard is made of 2’ thick rammed earth walls that appear to emerge from the land and form a protective shell for the interior of the building.
What a beautiful residence from Jobe Corral Architects. The pictures alone are an experience.
YLW (June 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. June was no email newsletters month.
June was a success! I went into Mailbrew weekly and hit the ‘archive all’ button and got a nice little confetti emote each time I cleared the queue. What June has taught me is that I was subscribed to several great newsletters that I can really do without. I also learned that while Mailbrew is an amazing app, it is one I’m going to try to phase out.
The ability to create newsletters from Reddit content (which is a whole other dumpster fire given the API debacle that’s happened over there), RSS feeds, YouTube content, etc. is great, but it also leads me to create more content consumption patterns than what I actually need. I’m moving the 3 newsletters I’d like to keep getting over to Matter. That’s my read-later app of choice, and it integrates with my writing flow. By ceasing use of Mailbrew, I’ll have less places to consume digital content, which seems like a nice step towards additional focus.
July was going to be no hot showers, but I have decided to take July off from the YLW experiment. August will be no hot showers. I’ve maintained not drinking anything other than coffee and water, with two exceptions in June. Still primarily in grayscale mode. Still pooping in the dark. Using July to regroup and maintain the longer-term habits that have been forming feels right.
103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known
A lot of gems in this list, but two of my favorites are:
Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain.
and
Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.
Kevin posted this list of 103 bits when he turned 70, but then curated a list of 450 in book form. The books is called Excellent Advice for Living and it’s on my to read list.
Christopher Walken Shares the Secrets of Acting Like Christopher Walken
Of all the characters that people love to impersonate, Christopher Walken is in the top 3.
The entire read is great if you’re a Walken fan, but this gives me hope that I’ll have a memoir to read in the future:
Do you ever consider writing a memoir?
I do. I have yellow pads, stacks of them. One of these days I need somebody to help me get it organized. I was thinking of getting a court stenographer and just talking and having them write it down without any punctuation and seeing what would happen. I’ve always resented punctuation.
YLW (May 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. May was no podcasts or audiobooks month.
I’ll keep this one brief. I made it 2 days. Literally 2. May 1st and 2nd were spent listening to 2Pac’s entire catalog during a long commute to Tampa for a 3-day workshop. On the way there on May 3, I opened Castro, dismissed the alert I’d setup via a Shortcuts automation to remind me I wasn’t supposed to be there and proceeded to listen with delight to an episode of Connected.
I’ve listened to countless podcasts since that day during this month. I decided that while this experiment is to teach me to be comfortable with discomfort, giving up podcasts was something my brain just isn’t ready to train myself to do.
June is going to be no email newsletters, which tickle a different part of my brain, but I think I’ll be more successful with that one. Still not drinking anything other than coffee and water. Still in grayscale mode. Still pooping in the dark. Still really enjoying this year of living without and learning more about myself in the process.
Coffee While Traveling
One of the first things I do when I’m in a foreign city is pull up the Maps app and search for local coffee shops. I like to think of it as my “coffee passport” of sorts. There’s a few key criteria that will influence my decision on which places to try during whatever time I’m in that location. If they’re also a roaster, that’s a plus. If they have only one or just a few locations, that’s a plus.
I’m in Washington, D.C. for the first time and have my eye on a shop called Dua DC Coffee. It checks all the boxes and is unique in that it offers several Indonesian coffee beans for sale as well.
Inevitably, there are times I have to settle for whatever I can get. This morning we were running behind after a late night, so I went downstairs to the Starbucks installation in the hotel and got a triple espresso to stop my neck itching.
My recommendation would be that whenever you travel, try to find some local joints for whatever your food or drink passion may be. It let’s you link the memory of that location and visit through both taste and smell. Most of the trips I’ve taken have some coffee shop memory associated with them.
Update: I made it to Dua DC Coffee this morning and it was everything I could hope it would be. I’ll be going again tomorrow morning.
Digital simplicity
Manu’s feelings here are the same as my own:
But now, I don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t want to spend my time tracking which platforms are worth being on. I don’t want to spend my time setting up auto-posting from my site to every new website that comes online.
I just don’t care to maintain the complexity. If the platform where I’m posting has a simple checkbox to post it to Twitter when published, I may leave it checked. Otherwise, I have no plans to maintain automation schemes to the plethora of social network platforms that are swirling these days. My time is more valuable than whatever slight increase in readership I may receive.
My hope is that word of mouth and sharing of articles increase my readership organically over time. If it doesn’t… so be it.
YLW (Apr 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. April was pooping in the dark month.
April was the first month where I didn’t fail to comply with my goal even once. Every bowel movement I had in April was sans electronics of any type and was done in the dark, like a gentleman. I can say that the linked article’s findings and mine were the same. Using that time to not become distracted by any virtual shit on my phone let me reconnect with the literal shit I was taking. My sessions were more focused and efficient, and they served as a chance to take inventory of my functions and body.
This habit is one that I’ll stick with for the long term. I can also confirm that I’ve had no beverages other than coffee and water during the month of April, which has been great. I’ve reached the plateau with that habit where it’s no longer a moment of pause or temptation when my father-in-law offers me a soda while having a bar-b-que. I simply say, “No thanks, I don’t drink that anymore,” without a moment’s hesitation.
May is no podcasts or audiobooks month. A bit of shitty timing, given that I have a long commute May 1st–3rd because of an in-person work engagement, but when I thought for a moment about switching the monthly items around so I could listen to podcasts during the trip, I realized that’s exactly the opposite of leaning into discomfort. I’ll use the time to reflect on things in silence, or enjoy some music playlists that I’ve ignored for a long time, given that podcasts have become my primary driving audio companion.
Zen and the Art of Cable Management
I spent some time a few weeks back reworking the laptop and cable management setup under my sit/stand desk. Most of the components are the same, but a new desk mounted (vs. in-tray) power strip with built-in USB-C ports made things so much cleaner. My other favorite “trick” was to side-mount the under-desk 3D printed Thunderbolt dock holder to the cable management tray. I did this by using the metal folding “wing” style wall anchors to secure the mount in 3 places. If you have any questions on how this setup works, reach out.
Under Desk Cable Management
Intentional Phone
These are my current default lock and home screens on my phone. The text is purposely set to a dark gray so that it isn’t very eye catching. I wish I could also change the color of the status bar indicators and camera/flashlight launcher buttons, but that’s not an option in iOS, at this time.
The messages you see in the lock screen widgets are achieved by using the free Any Text from Sindre Sorhus. When tapped, each of the 3 widgets open a different Shortcut. This allows me to pause and consider if I really should be looking at the phone, but still get to quick entry functions from the lock screen so that I can jot something down and then return to life vs. get lost in the tap-tap rathole.
During my workday, I have a scheduled Focus Mode that swaps out a couple of the lock screen widgets with ones that launch directly into Outlook or Teams. That’s there for convenience for the times I step away from my desk, but I’m torn there a bit. I’ll likely eliminate them, as I should treat the moments I step away from the desk as a chance to step away from email and live chats as well (or at least not make them so quick to get to). The other option is to just leave the phone on my desk and get away from it during those moments too.
The home screen uses minimal iconography and a gradient wallpaper that completely hides the dock background. The icons on the left and right are shortcuts that open Messages and Safari, respectively. The one in the middle is a shortcut that presents a menu with options to drive other shortcuts for various contexts. I’ll detail that shortcut more over on tech & coffee soon. I’ve found it to be an elegant way to drive my behavior to a specific action or app , vs. swiping down to search for an app or swiping left to dive into the App Library.
For home screen widgets, I have just a few that I use and they’re located in the often forgotten “Today View” that’s a swipe to the right from the main home screen. While home screen widgets are informative and useful, I found that the more of them I added, the more I had an excuse to interact with the phone vs. use it as a tool.
This setup isn’t for everyone. I realize it’s sidelining features like beautiful photographs as my lock screen background, etc. I’m okay with that, since the my goal isn’t to leverage every feature of the phone, but to choose the ones that drive me towards intentional usage of it.
A Brief History of OK
First and foremost, if you haven’t checked out Source Type before, you should. The design of the site is striking.
This article gets presented in typical Source Type grandeur and doesn’t disappoint. There’s this bit:
In a New Yorker review of the 2008 book Thumbspeak, Louis Menand declares “K” as likely the most common (and in my opinion, most controversial) text message. As she puts it, the single letter carries with it a powerful decree, “I have nothing to say, but God forbid that you should think that I am ignoring your message.”
An image from the article describes how I feel when someone sends me “K” as a reply in a chat:
Mike Tyson giving the “K” gesture
YLW (Q1 2023)
Quarterly look at my Year of Living Without. January - March were phone grayscale mode, no sweets and no beverages other than water and black coffee, respectively.
Being a quarter of the way through my first year of living without exercise, I thought it would make sense to evaluate how these first three months have gone and how they’ve informed my plans for the rest of the year.
Two out of the three months have led to a lasting shift in doing without things. That wasn’t the goal of the exercise, but I do find it interesting that some things just feel like changes I’ve become comfortable making for a longer duration. I’m not saying these things will never change, but they’ve become defaults that any deviation from will likely be momentary. I continue to have my iPhone and Apple Watch in grayscale mode. When I need the color I turn it on briefly, until I’m done with the task where it assists me, then I turn it back off. It’s a quick triple-click of the side button away and that’s made it feel easy enough to toggle for everyday use.
I’ve gone back to enjoying sweets when the mood strikes me. I likely overdid it a bit with Easter egg candy, but otherwise I don’t feel like this is anything I’m doing in excess with any regularity after February. So far in April, I’ve only had water and coffee without missing a beat. I did reintroduce milk/cream for the occasional cortadito espresso drink, but I consider that to be in the coffee category at this point.
April is pooping in the dark month, which, so far, I’ve done without failure. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that this will be another one that sticks with me beyond this month. Not only is the process more reflective and focused, it feels like I’m not using it as an excuse to use the phone passively.
Looking ahead, I’m adding a few more “without” items to the list, but haven’t decided which months from July to December they’ll occupy. I’ll make that decision sometime in May and update the original post with the planned schedule. The new items include:
- No complaining (inspired by this article from 2007)
- No online purchases from my phone
- No phone other than for navigation/CarPlay use
The last one sounds more wild than it is really intended to be in practice. I have an Apple Watch w/ cellular connectivity that allows me to take calls from my family and read/respond to texts. I have an iPad that I can use from anywhere when something with a larger screen is needed. I work from home in front of a computer with access to the internet. Given all those factors, the phone feels like it becomes just another passive screen to grab time that could be otherwise more focused on something else (even if that something else is writing on the iPad). I guess what I’m saying is that the intention of that month isn’t to remove screens, it’s to use them more intentionally for purposes that are generating some value, vs. just mindless interaction with the screen that fits in my pocket. I’d originally planned to switch to a “dumb” phone (i.e. a flip phone) for that month, but after some realistic conversation with my wife (and recognizing that all of the other Apple devices being options to replace the capabilities in more intentional ways) I’ve ditched the “dumb” phone for a “no phone” approach.
As always, if you care to engage with me on any of this year-long experiment, get in touch!
Seeing Beauty in Basic To-Do Lists
Carl’s thoughts on to-do lists mirror my own in many ways. This feels especially relevant:
I’ve used quite a few different to-do apps to organise personal and work tasks. Some of them worked well but would have an ugly UI, some would be over-engineered resulting in a compromised UX, and others would find the right balance of form and function, but weren’t particularly well supported or maintained.
I’ve tried so many, and often trend back to pen and paper of some sort. Using iA Writer is a great idea. I’d consider a system similar to what Carl describes the next time I decide to overhaul how I manage tasks.
YLW (Mar 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. March was no beverages other than water and black coffee.
My month of living without beverages other than water and black coffee was mostly a success. I only failed two days of the month. The first was sometime mid-month when my mother-in-law asked me to try something “garlic”, but it was in fact so hot that my mouth was on fire, and I drank a Coke to try and ease the heat. Looking back on it, I should have just attempted to weather the discomfort with water alone.
The second time was just yesterday, the last day of March. I drank soda during a field trip with my daughter because it was “free”, and then had another when I returned home with pizza that my oldest daughter had for a sleepover. I can say with certainty that I only drank the second soda because I’d already failed with the first. In both cases, I should have gone with water, but I was weak.
All the other days, I only drank water or black coffee. I did start using my carbonator more often than I had in recent months to make sparkling water. That’s something I’ve always enjoyed, but I just didn’t take the extra few moments to do it regularly. I invested in a new carbonator mid-month because the plastic SodaStream model I had wasn’t much fun to use. I’d also decided by this point that by making sparkling water more consistently available, this new reduced beverage intake was likely to stick longer than just the month of March. I’m going to start refilling my own carbonator cartridges, as it is way more cost-effective than SodaStream canister swaps. I drink sparkling water almost daily now, and that’s likely to continue.
While I will start bringing some milk or creamer back into the mix with the occasional espresso-based cortadito or cafè con leche, I don’t think I’ll go back to drinking juice regularly. After the couple of sodas I had yesterday (and another today with leftover pizza), I’m pretty resolved to say even those can be cut out. A reduced-beverage diet feels right to me, for a few reasons. I haven’t had juice regularly for years, and the soda does nothing for me health-wise. I’ve been drinking my coffee black for years too, so no major shift there. I think that by just focusing on water, both sparkling and still, and coffee, I get everything I need and what I actually want. This exercise proved it to myself, so it was worthwhile.
I made an update to my scheduled monthly sacrifices. April was originally slated to be “No Apple Watch” month. I realized that by removing the Apple Watch, I’d almost certainly use my phone more often, which is the opposite of where I’d like to be headed habitually. I decided to switch it to “Pooping in the Dark” month. It was inspired by this article and the main point is to eliminate electronic distractions and return to a more natural and minimalist approach to
The Makita Coffee Machine
James Hoffmann’s videos are always good… but this one is one of my favorites of all-time.
YLW (Feb 2023)
Monthly follow up from my Year of Living Without. February was no sweets.
February “no sweets” month was mostly a success. I did fail a couple of times, but not so many that I can’t count them on one hand. In short summary, I had a donut twice (couldn’t turn down a loving gesture from my wife, both times), I absentmindedly ordered and consumed an ice cream treat with my oldest daughter during her paleontologist field trip and I ate some ice cream with my family on the last night of the month after returning from some business travel. Those missteps were tiny in comparison to the number of times I would have eaten some cookies, or ice cream or Valentine candy treats that the kids offered, but did not due to the “without” mentality.
A few days into the month, I did recognize that I was a bit annoyed, and then later connected that it was likely because I was still mentally adjusting to doing without sweets. I didn’t cut out things like a small homemade cortadito (a small espresso with some sugar and cream drink). I found myself drinking juice and the occasional soda more frequently. I think recognizing that these things were likely in an effort to replace the definition of “sweets” I was using is valuable. I included in my off limits list things like ice cream, cookies, candies, chocolate and other dessert type items. Ultimately, I was much more present in the way I made decisions of what I was about to consume. I think that was the main goal, in addition to being more comfortable with discomfort. I’m pleased with the end result for February, but am not continuing it into March the way I did with grayscale mode from January.
March is my month of “only water or coffee to drink; coffee must be black, no dairy, no sweeteners.” So far, I haven’t failed yet. I was not a frequent soda or juice drinker before February, but I think March will reset from my increases in February when my body (and mind) were seeking something sweet. I could see March creating a new baseline where I just don’t drink certain things anymore as a general rule (soda being one of them).