Like many of us, Fashion has thrown in the towel and has decided to embrace sweatpants. Don’t just take my word on it; here’s one of the Guardian’s fashion writers explaining, well, How to dress up sweatpants.
Once the pandemic is over, I predict we are going to see a wave of fashion that is the total opposite of sweats. In the meantime, if you are going to wear them, use that article to be both comfy and stylish.
Someone today highlighted my tweeting while working. I thought it useful to explain how I work and how tweeting fits in.
For the past many years I have mostly worked in solitude. I get assignments and projects where I am mostly working by myself. I have some meetings where I talk to people, but 50-90% I don’t speak with anyone, day in and day out.
For many people that would be unbearable, but mostly I like it. Mostly. I do like to have company and I do like to stay in touch with the world. For that I use work tools from time to time. But I also use twitter.
On days where I am not slammed with work, I will use the pomodoro approach. I will set a timer for 15-25 minutes (depending on how good or bad my ADD is that day). Then I will take a 5 minute break and check out and respond on twitter. Then I will set a timer again. By doing this, I can get my brain to stay focused. I can do my work in focused spurts and then let my squirrelly brain go for a few minutes.
I have found by doing this I am the most productive I can be. So if you think, “how can this guy be productive if he is on twitter all the time?”, well, now you know.
P.S. If you say “why can’t you just stay focused like me”, I can just say my brain isn’t like yours. You may as well ask: “how come you can’t be the same height as me?”
(Photo by Chris J. Davis on Unsplash)
You’ve made resolutions to improve and already you’ve broken some of them. I get it: it’s hard to keep resolutions at the best of times, never mind during a pandemic. It’s worse if you were hoping those resolutions were what you were going to get you through the rest of the pandemic. You may feel adrift.
Fortunately help is at hand. Here is a good article that will provide you with some gentle resolutions and how you can keep them: I teach a course on happiness at Yale: this is how to make the most of your resolutions | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian.
In a nutshell, be more compassionate with yourself. By doing that, over time you may find you build up enough inner resources to go back and tackle those failed resolutions. Did I say failed? I meant, paused resolutions. 🙂
(Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)
I first came across Celmins work at a large exhibit recently at the AGO and was so blown away by it. I love the detail and the abstaction of her art. You can get really lost in just one of her works. I know I did when I saw them. I think you will too.
I was doing some research on her and I found these articles to be good. If you want to learn more about her, check them out:
Here are two links you need if your book shelves need arranging or inspiration:
(I love the above photo by L’odyssée Belle on Unsplash. I wish our city had something like that.)
This may be one of my favorite photographs of all time:
Nine Kings at Buckingham Palace – Iconic Photos
It pictures the nine European Kings gathered together for the funeral in 1910 of England’s King Edward VII.
What I love about it is the illusion of power and permanence it holds. All nine men were soon to shaken by the changes brought on by the upcoming war. All nine would fall from the height they stood on in this photo.
If you go to the link in Iconic Photos, you can get a who’s who of the Kings as well as what happened to them.
More on it here including some wonderful detail, such as the seating list for dinner. Of those gathered around the table, everyone was royalty save the heads of state of the USA and France.
Whenever I read By The Book interviews in the New York Times, I am always a bit embarrassed. Everyone it seems has a stellar collection of books that they are about to read, they have read all the classics including some obscure ones, they read voraciously, and they arrange their books wonderfully. Meh. Reading about them makes me feel bad.
That’s why I felt better after reading this interview with Ai Weiwei: In the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei’s Father Burned the Family’s Books – The New York Times.
He is well read and thoughtful but he seems much more ordinary about his book reading. And for good reasons. I recommend the interview in itself. And if you feel bad about your own reading, I highly recommend it.
(Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash)
To improve society, you need governments to want to improve society. This seems obvious, unless you see government function as either wasting money or punishing the worst off in our society. But governments can function very effectively to improve society, and these two articles illustrate this:
In both countries, poverty isn’t declining by magic or the invisible hand of capitalism. It’s being driven down by specific policies and programs with an aim to eliminate poverty.
A better world is possible. Progress is possible. We just need people and their governments to want it to become possible. Never believe that progress is impossible or an illusion.
(Chart above from here. The downward line is people living in extreme poverty, while the upward line is people not living in extreme poverty.)
Yesterday I wrote about building up a new habit. Some habits do not require you to gain new skills (e.g. eat more fruit, walk every day). Some habits do (e.g. learning to code, draw, run a 10K). When you first try to build up new habits in those areas, you are going to suck. Your code will suck, your drawings will look like crap, your running might be difficult and painful. To deal with this, you need to do two things.
One thing is to make your goal to suck less in the time to build up your new habit. If you are drawing every day, don’t worry if it sucks. Aim to suck less than the last day. To do that, you will need to do two things:
If you are learning to run and it is hard, research how to make it easier. Maybe you need to stretch more, maybe you need to vary your routine, maybe you need to just cut yourself some slack. If you are learning to draw, maybe you need to draw different things, or maybe you need to draw the same thing every day, or maybe you need better media. You get the idea.
For more good advice on this, see this post by Austin Kleon. In that post you can get a PDF of the calendar pictured above if you need a way to track your progress to less suckage.
And what happens if you keep working on sucking less? Eventually you will find you don’t suck at all. (Or if you do think you suck, everyone else will think you are good and wonder why you think that. :))
It’s a new year, and you may not only be fed up with the pandemic but with the bad habits you picked up during the pandemic. You – ok, and me! – need new habits. While there a billion trillion guides on how to build healthy habits, here’s a nice article from the New York Times to help get you going: How to Build Healthy Habits.
In a nutshell:
Stacking or tying your new habit involves tying your new habit to your daily habits and routines. For example, if you drink several cups of coffee each day and you want a habit of eating more fruits and vegetables, then have a piece of fruit every time you go have a coffee. To make it easy, put the bowl of fruit next to the coffee machine. To reward yourself, have a small — small, not big! — piece of chocolate after completing the new habit. To do it daily, tie it to a routine or current habit you do daily or more.
Remember it takes time to build a new habit. According to the article, building a new habit can take “from 18 to 254 days. The median time was 66 days”. So give yourself some time. And start small and pace yourself.
A few more thoughts:
(Top Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash. Bottom Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash)
Reading through this, 7 Concepts That Celebrate The Importance Of Simplicity, I started thinking we don’t have these words in English perhaps because we don’t value what they represent. But then I came across guyub. According to the piece:
The Indonesian idea of guyub (pronounced guy-oob) celebrates the importance of social connection. This concept entails bringing individuals together to share life’s ups and downs as a community, offering support and ultimately creating a happier, healthier lifestyle.
Now we do have words like that in English: family, community, home. They are simple words: so simple we don’t give them a lot of focus. So perhaps we don’t a Swedish word like döstädning but we do have our own words that represent a range of feelings for what we value. Words like Christmastime or Thanksgiving, which represent much more than a date on the calendar. Perhaps in other languages those are untranslatable too.
(Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash)
Then you want to go to this page and check out the magical bookshelves there (like the one above). This lover of books and design absolutely drooled over them (metaphorically speaking).
(I don’t know how comfortable or useful that chair is above, but I love the idea of it.)
Recording. Record. To me those words bring up images of black vinyl disks to play music. Records are great, but there is so much more to making a recording.
A recording can be anything, on any media. All the photos you take on your phone and store on Instagram are a recording. All the receipts you collect in a box are a recording too: a recording of what you spent and where you spent it. Last year I wrote down all the dinners I had since the start of the pandemic: it too is a recording.
For 2021, a good resolution is to record some part of your life. Do it in a way that is easy to do regularly. Do it such that there is enough information to look at it later. Some of my recordings this year were terrible: books I read, runs I went on. Others were strong: things I enjoyed despite the pandemic, politicians I wrote, friends I kept in contact with.
Some people like to use paper for this. Austin Kleon, a master of recording, outlines his process here: The year in notebooks. As he says
If you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution, keeping a daily notebook is a pretty solid one.
On the other hand, if you are a digital person like me, use a simple tool like SimpleNote or Evernote or just your smartphone camera to record that part of your life. Whatever tool works best for you is the best tool.
It doesn’t have to be a diary or journal format. It can be a log of the best thing that happened each day. Or the funniest thing that happened that week. Or the weather. Just record something, even if it is a few words.
There’s a number of benefits to making these recordings. If you do it well, at the end of your year you may be able to build up a list like this: 100 things that made my year (2020) – Austin Kleon. Even if your list is smaller, what you may get out of such a list is a recording of what makes your life worth living and what made things worthwhile during times when perhaps things weren’t that great.
Later, as you go through it again, your memory will fire up and you may recall other good moments not captured on paper or computer but still there. That’s another great thing about recording things: it helps you remember so much more.
Your life has value and meaning. Recordings help show that. So get making them.
(Photos by Photo by Samantha Lam (top) and by Markus Winkler (bottom) on Unsplash)
It’s a new year. A new year after a very difficult one. It’s a good year to work on being optimistic. If you want to put in that work, start by reading this: How to Be More Optimistic – The New York Times. It will give you some tools to get you started on the path of seeing the fullness of your life.
Yes, there will be difficulties: there always are. The glass is never full. But being able to see things positively is a skill to work on. Today is a good day to start working on it.
(Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash)
If you thought that Bill Gates was thinking about pandemics last year, you are incorrect (although he has put a lot of thought into them). No, what he was thinking about when he wrote this,What I’m thinking about this New Year’s Eve, was taxes. Specifically, how to make taxes in the U.S. fairer.
It’s worth reading regardless of your political beliefs. If you are more right wing, you will find things to agree and disagree with. Likewise if you are left wing.
There is too much inequality and poverty in the world. Fairer taxes is one way to address that.
(Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)
Cognitive Behavior Therapy is an effective way to deal with many forms of anxiety and depression. I’d argue it can help people with their thinking in general. If you are looking for tools to help you with it, here are two sets of resources:
(Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash)
Do you know who Kathy Sullivan is? I didn’t. I know who Elon Musk is. I know James Cameron. Not to mention many other astronauts, athletes, etc. I’d argue she is as great as any one them. After all, she is the first woman to reach the deepest known spot in the ocean after being the first American woman to walk in space. That’s amazing.
If you’d like to know more about here, there’s this piece in the New York Times. And of course she has a Wikipedia page.
(Image attribution: NASA – Great Images in NASA Description, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6449687)
Anyone with an interest in Glace Bay will find these worth reading:
You might find this interesting: What Happened When I (Tried to) Read 30 Books in 30 Days
Personally I think that is not the ideal way to read. But you should check it out if that sort of thing appeals to you.
Also, it’s the pandemic: don’t read that close to anyone but your immediate circle. 🙂
It’s Boxing Day in Canada. For many, it’s a time of resting and reflection. For others, it’s a time of frenzied shopping to get a good deal. I am more of the former. If you are more of the latter, this link will help you. It supposedly has the best deals for Boxing Day in Canada. Of course you can search on Google for that too. Regardless, all the best to you on your shopping. May you save a bundle.
For more on the history and traditions of Boxing Day, click here.
Merry Christmas! I hope the day is a peaceful and joyous one for you and yours.
As part of the celebration, you may be making a turkey. Good for you. But making a turkey can be daunting and fearful. You need help. You need a guide. Indeed, what you need this excellent guide from epicurious. It will help you get it done like nobody’s business.
All the best to you and yours on this great day. Merry Christmas. And happy New Year to you as well.
If you are planning to have a Zoom get together over the holidays and you are look for ways to jazz it up with a wine (bourbon?) and cheese pairing, check this out: The Best Spirits and Cheese Pairings According to the Experts | The Manual
Or you can go to the site that provided the fine poster above.
Merry Christmas Eve!
If you are spending Christmas alone this year and you find the thought of it difficult (and why not?) then you might find this helpful: The Best Ways to Spend the Holidays Alone, From Someone Who Does It Every Year.
Some good tips there, pandemic or no pandemic.
Happy Christmas, wherever you are, and with whomever you are spending it with.
Are here: Best Gifts from West Elm for $50 or Less | Apartment Therapy.
Even if you can’t get them from West Elm, try and use the ideas and get your last minute items crossed off your list.
(Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash)
It’s tough shopping in this pandemic. If you are stuck trying to find a gift and you are thinking of regifting, then read this first: Best Regifting Ideas — 5 Things That Are OK to Regift, and 5 That Aren’t | Apartment Therapy.
Yes, wine is a good choice (assuming the person getting the gift likes wine). For other Dos and Don’ts, check out that article.
(Image Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash)
I go through periods of cooking just the basics, followed by furious sessions of mad cooking. I think I am going to be transitioning from the former to the latter over the next while. So I have pulled together these recipes of pretty basic things to try out and perhaps add to my repertoire. You might want to as well.
Sushi-ish: I have a bag of sushi style rice just sitting in my kitchen asking me to make some sushi, so I think I might use these to give it a go: How to Make Sushi (with Pictures), How to Choose Sushi-Grade Seafood, Homemade Sushi: Tips, Tricks, and Toppings! – Peas and Crayons, 30 Good Ideas for Sushi Roll Fillings – Easy Homemade Sushi: and even Make a Sushi Bowl at Home — With Canned Tuna | by Mark Bittman | Heated
Crepes: I love dishes that allow you to experiment, and I love food you can carry. Sushi rolls are one form of that. Crepes are another. I want to try one or both of these. This is classic: Robyn Cooks: Ham, Asparagus, and Swiss Cheese Crepes and this sounds amazing: Shrimp and Sugar Snap Pea Bánh Xèo (Vietnamese Sizzling Rice Crepes) Recipe.
Noodles: two of my favorite noodle dishes are these too. Gonna try at least one in the next while: Dan Dan Noodles Recipe and Singapore Noodles. Can’t go wrong with a spicy bowl of noodles.
Nashville-Style Chicken: I’ve been wanting to make this for awhile, but I have balking at it. It sounds exciting and dangerous. 🙂 But one of these recipes ought to fit the bill. Some of them are more authentic and some less so: Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Recipe | Bon Appétit, Nashville Style Hot Fried Chicken – From A Chef’s Kitchen, Nashville-Style Hot Chicken recipe | Epicurious.com, Nashville Hot Chicken, the History Behind the South’s “It” Dish and What Is Nashville Hot Chicken? | TASTE
Cuban sandwiches: I have long loved classic sandwiches like a Reuben or a Club House. I have recently added Cuban sandwiches to that list. Such a great combination. Here’s three I liked: Cuban Sandwich Recipe | Tasting Table, Cubano: A Traditional Cuban Sandwich Recipe and
How to Make Real-Deal Cuban Sandwiches | Serious Eats.
Gonna try and see if I can perfect these. Maybe slow roast some pork just for the sheer deliciousness of it.
Quesadillas: they aren’t really a sandwich, any more than a hot dog or a crepe is a sandwich, but again, a good bit of walking around food. Roasted Corn Quesadillas – Step by Step Photos – Budget Bytes is a nice version of one. And this is just a nice piece on how to appreciate them in general: How to Pair Wine With Quesadillas | Food & Wine.
Perfect for when you are kinda too tired to cook.
Breads: of course if you want to make sandwiches, you want bread. You may even want to make your own. I have. In that case, consider: Easy No-Knead Focaccia Recipe, No-Knead Ciabatta, Shockingly Easy No-Knead Focaccia Recipe, and No Knead Focaccia Rolls.
Various cozy dishes for the cold: Now it is winter, I start hankering for dishes like these: The Coziest Vegetable-and-Sausage Soup for Those Chilly May Days – The New York Times (I love this one), Kielbasa, Apple, and Onion Strata with Mornay Sauce Recipe (love stratas too), The 10 Most Popular Soup Recipes of 2020 | Bon Appétit (we all need good soups), Homemade Potatoes Au Gratin – Budget Bytes (perfect with everything), Kimchi Fried Rice, White Fish & Scallop Chowder Recipe on Food52, Mary Berry’s beef stew recipe, and Goulash recipe. And this is always good: Pasta e Fagioli with Escarole recipe | Epicurious.com.
Pork chops: I think pork chops are underrated. You can do so much with them. For example, here’s just two good examples: Baked Honey Mustard Pork Chops and Blackberry Sage Pork Chops.
I also note that pork is sometimes the loss leader in my meat section. For those weeks, having these recipes on standby makes sense.
Salad: here’s one to go with those chops and pretty much everything else: Italian Chopped Salad Recipe.
Good snacks: You need ’em. Here’s two: Toasted Sambal Cashews Recipe, and Marinated Olives and Feta Recipe
Pét-Nat: I had a period when I was drinking a lot of this during the pandemic. I still like it, but it can be hit and miss with it. If want to learn more, read this: A Beginner’s Guide to Pét-Nat, A More Affordable Champagne Alternative.
Two thoughts: one, Pét-Nat is harder to find that the article let’s on. Two, the true and better affordable alternative to champagne is cremant. Get that instead.
Finally: I think I am going to do some BBQing over the winter. I may even do charcoal and do this: How to Build Your Own BBQ Chimney « Food Hacks :: WonderHowTo.
Then I’ll get some steaks like this and cook them: How to Cook Tomahawk Steak · i am a food blog.
Now will I do all these? Likely no. But it’s good to have goals/aspirations, and fwiw, these are mine.
It’s Christmastime: expectations can be high, and sometimes unachievable. This is especially true during this pandemic. If you are struggling to feel good during this time, here are two articles that can help:
Learn How to Appreciate What You Already Have
This is a link to a powerful essay on the remnants of segregation in the United States. You can see these remnants faintly in the essay’s photographs, like this one above. Off to the left is the entrance to the balcony where the “coloreds” had to go while the “whites” entered through the door on the right and sat separately on the main level closer to the stage. There are many such images in this essay.
It’s good that such images are captured. Soon enough these buildings will all be gone, and the remnants too. That’s why things like this essay are good, because they call our attention to and remind us of what occurred.
The essay is not just filled with moving images, but the words themselves are worth taking the time to take in. I hope you can find the time to take it in and linger over it.
Well well well, it’s the last month of 2020, and my last not-really-a-newsletter newsletter! I appreciate you taking a moment to read my latest not-a-newsletter of highlights and ramblings since the one in November.
I’m not sure if I will continue these here and in this format in the new year. Let’s see. Something for me to consider as the year closes. But for now, here’s things I’ve been thinking on since the last one:
Pandemic: It’s hard not to think about the pandemic. Since November, the pandemic has only gotten worse in many places. My town and province is no exception. Cases are up, deaths are up, efforts to flatten the curve seem to be going nowhere. My son’s school was shut down then the rest of the schools were shut down. As for leadership, it seems very reactive these days. A good analysis of that is here: With the pandemic surging, we need more leadership and less urging – The Globe and Mail. Also this piece: Why Doug Ford is stumbling during COVID-19’s second wave? Too often governments thought they could somehow manage the disease and open the economy. They couldn’t.
One of the reason deal with COVID has been so frustrating is well captured in this image:
Governments everywhere keep fiddling with the dial as if to find the right setting, and then find there is none. (Image from xkcd: Covid Precaution Level)
Some places have managed better than others, but even there it has not been perfect. Not long after this came out, Living in Nova Scotia’s Covid-Free World – The New York Times, they had an outbreak in cases. Nova Scotia is still doing very well, but it is hard to stay perfect. (I’m looking at you New Zealand.)
Besides the health costs, there are the economic costs of the pandemic too. Articles like this come out every month in Toronto: Toronto rent prices are down 15% since last year at this time. Since that one, the rents have dropped to 20%. Meanwhile, places like The Gap are calling it quits in parts of the city: The Gap is closing its flagship store in Toronto
It may be a sad reality that many of storefronts will be boarded up when the pandemic is over. Indeed, many are boarded up now.
And it will be over, this awful time. Vaccines are rolling out now. Here are places you can use to track it:
In the meantime, stay safe and try to stay healthy this winter. If you are in Toronto, consider this: A New Way to Play: Recreation During COVID-19 – City of Toronto
Non-pandemic items:
The US: This newsletter is not just about the pandemic. It’s also time to send out a big Bronx cheer to the current president of the United States. I often argued that he was not the worst president in American history. I am wavering in that belief. Just the number of unnecessary deaths resulting from his inaction make him truly terrible. As we lift up the rock and uncover more about him, I think he will only seem worse. Meanwhile, here’s a good piece on his ending: Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial – The New York Times.
I would settle for Biden just being not-Trump. But he has a chance to do more. I hope he will. Here’s one way he could do it: Biden transition: How he could act fast and outrun Republican opposition to his presidency – Vox
The economy: One thing we are doing to hear a lot about is the deficits and debts now. This is not the time to do that. There is still much needs to be done for the world to recover. Not only that, but interest rates for some nations are essentially negative. See this for details: China Borrows at Negative Rates for the First Time – WSJ
One group in Canada you might hear banging on about the debt is the Fraser Institute. So here’s a reminder from PressProgress: pay no attention to anything the Fraser Institute says. Even if you are a right winger, at least find some source that doesn’t manipulate the facts.
Newsletters: they have become old hat now. So much so I think I will not comment on them any more. I would like to highlight one last one, though. David Lebovitz has moved to Substack. Here is his.. He also has a great blog. He’s been an excellent user of social media for some time (not to mention a fine cook and author). Go check him out. Meanwhile, for anyone tired of turning bananas into banana bread, check out this: Banana and Chocolate Chip Upside Down Cake (Lowfat) – David Lebovitz
My blog: ICYMI, I wrote earlier on this blog about friluftsliv (a concept you should know), Ikea, cardigans and why they are great, Betty Godwin and why she is great, various cocktails (and why you should drink them), as well as being moderately gifted, being good and being Paul McCartney.
Thanks for reading this, as well as anything else on my blog. I always appreciate it.
And for those celebrating it:
Sure, you could put it in a cocktail (e.g. sazarac), but armagnac straight up or over ice is more than fine without anything else. I’ve been a fan for decades, and if you want to know why you should become one too, read this. Then go out and grab a bottle. I’ve had the one pictured and it is really good.
If so, then you will find the next two links handy. I did. My son broke his screen and while I was able to repair it, other damaged occurred because it was so badly broken. Fortunately while he lost data, I was able to restore the phone to “new” state using these links. From there he went on to add his favorite apps, etc.
Important note! On the later versions of MacOS, you no longer have access to iTunes and you cannot download it and install it. So don’t waste your time doing that like I did. 🙂
Links:
If you forgot your iPhone passcode – Apple Support
If you see the Restore screen on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch – Apple Support
If you can’t update or restore your iPhone or iPod touch – Apple Support
If you see the Restore screen on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch – Apple Support
I am a huge fan of the Fitbit Aria scale, even when it is brutally honest about my weight situation. It prevents me from deceiving myself about how I am doing. And it encourages me if I’m making even a bit of progress.
The Aria scale measures both your weight and your body fat percentage to the fraction of a pound. (It also gives you your BMI, but I don’t care about that). That little bit of accuracy helps. I found when I was dieting, sometimes knowing that my weight went down by a fraction of a percentage helped me get through the day. (Motivation often turns on small points like this.) Likewise, right now with the pandemic I see my weight going up by a fraction of a pound every week. So I am trying to get it to go down by a fraction of a pound every week. A half pound every week adds up to 25 pounds in a year.
Having both those numbers prevent you from fooling yourself. If you go on a low carb diet, your weight may drop suddenly, but your body fat percentage may go up alot. (In the past mine did). That tells me that I am not really losing fat or even muscle that quickly. It’s likely water. Over time I did lose weight, but that initial weight loss isn’t what I thought.
The flip side of that is I have noticed my body fat percentage has gone up during the pandemic even though my body weight has stabilized. Makes sense: my physical effort has really gone down hill during the pandemic, and so my muscles have decreased. Sadly. That’s very different from situations I have had in the pre pandemic times when I was working out and my weight was staying the same but my body fat was decreasing. That was good: I was replacing fat with muscle.
Since I also have a fitbit for tracking my activity, all of those numbers sync up in the Fitbit app, which makes it easier for me to track the relationship between my activity and my weight.
I can also use it to track my mental state too. I can tell when I have had stressful times in my life because I either stop eating and suddenly lose weight fast, or I start eating a lot and gain weight fast. I might think I am doing fine, but the numbers say otherwise.
It’s not perfect (what is?). I tend to weigh myself the first thing every morning. If eat a carb heavy meal the night before, my weight will be up. If I stop eating early in the evening, my weight will go down. I don’t worry about it though: I am mostly focused on the trends.
I have gone through two of these scales now and if this one dies, I will certainly get another one. I find it too easy to deceive myself about my weight: the Aria scale is the brutally honest friend I need to stay on track.
Americans might find it unbelievable, but here in Canada we don’t have Venmo. We have other means of transferring cash digitally, but none of them are great, in my humble opinion. I’ve longed for something better.
Perhaps others have too because Wealthsimple has come out with an app, now in beta, that reminds me of what Venmo does. You can read about it here. It looks promising. I will definitely be looking at this over the year to come. I imagine the big Canadian banks will as well.
It’s that time of the year. And if you haven’t gotten a tree yet — either from a field or from the attic — you might be asking yourself: what is the most environmentally friendly option? Well, the folks at the New York Times asked themselves that too and wrote about it, here.
I am a big fan of real trees and will continue to get them. But read the article and judge for yourself.
(Photo by Danny Castaneda on Unsplash)
Just follow these six easy steps:
Hey, if you are like me, you are ordering your presents online. When you do that, you get a lot of emails back updating you on the status of your order. Since it is Christmas, you are anxious about your order so naturally you are checking on them quickly. And that’s why you need to be careful.
Last night I got an email from Target asking me to check out the status of my order by clicking the link. This was fishy (phishy?) to me, because I didn’t order anything from Target. I checked the links in the email and sure enough: they did not go back to the Target web site.
And it’s not just merchants. I also got one from Paypal warning me of someone breaking into my account and asking me to press a button which wasn’t linked to PayPal.
In short, check your confirmation emails carefully before you click on anything. Otherwise your Christmas could be an unhappy one.
The new Apple AirPods came out, and some critics flailed them for being too expensive. A fair criticism. Some new products are terribly expensive but allow Apple to enter a market and gain share and work out aspects of the product before they move to make cheaper versions that dominant more.
Perhaps the AirPod Maxs will be like that. Some Apple products are strikeouts, and some are grand slams, but more often than not many are singles and doubles: not terrible, not great, but good to very good.
An example of that is the Apple HomePod Mini. This is one of those not bad not great products. Like the HomePod, it isn’t a failure, but it will not likely take the speaker market by storm either. Apple used to do that: wait and see what others in the marketplace were doing, them come out with something so much better and blow them away. But that was then. They are still great at what they do, and they are still financially world beaters, but I haven’t seen anything that has transformed the market like the iPod or the iPhone. And that fine.
For more on the HomePod and the AirPods Max, see these two pieces:
One product that year after year does great but is underappreciated is the Mac Mini. Apparently it is better than ever. You can read about it, here: Apple Mac Mini Review (2020): Brawn on a Budget | WIRED
Like the iPod Touch, it’s a product that Apple keeps refining and keeps make it better through each iteration. People tend to focus on the big new things from Apple, but they have some golden oldies that are always worth revisiting.
Here’s two good pieces on Paul McCartney on the eve of his latest album, “McCartney 3”.
The first one is an interview with him. Among other things, it shows the difficulty of him doing interviews, since it’s hard for him to add anything new (he still manages to do so): Paul McCartney Is Still Trying to Figure Out Love – The New York Times
While the New York Times piece is really good, this piece is great: 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney – The Ruffian.
I have always been a fan of McCartney, but this second piece made me a greater fan. I’ve read it a few times, and even though it is long, I look forward to reading it again. It really does do a fantastic job of highlighting what a great artist Paul really is and addresses some of the many criticisms of him over the years. McCartney has been pinned down over the years both by some bad musical choices and by some (unfair?) musical criticism. One thing I liked about the second piece is how it nicely rebuffs some of that (e.g. “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, “Another Day”). Highly recommended that piece, but both are worth a read.
P.S. Since I am banging on about him, my two cents on McCartney from the late 60s to the late 70s is that the Beatles were originally Lennon’s band, but as time past, McCartney grew and started to dominate the Beatles more. Meanwhile Harrison also came into his own. At one late point Lennon tried to come up with an arrangement of how they would allocate songs on the future albums (I think 4 for John, 4 for Paul, 2 for George, and 1 for Ringo), but I think things were too far gone by then. They were too big for the band. That’s too bad (what an understatement). If you go through their musical output of the 70s and picked out the best songs of all of them and made 3 or 4 albums, they would have been great albums (just think of taking the best of Imagine + All Things Must Past + Band on the Run, for example). Plus if they were together they would have pushed each other to do more great things.
I’m not sure how well they would have done past then. The birth of hip hop, punk and new wave might have washed them aside. Or they could have become frozen in amber, like some other big bands of that era. (Look at a Rolling Stones concert play list some time.) Then again, McCartney teamed up with Elvis Costello and made fine music, so they could have turned out to stay great.
Regardless of alternative histories, McCartney went on to make his own timeline as a creative artist. Here’s to the success of McCartney III and perhaps IV one day as well.
I’m not going to say that your goal setting is wrong. But it’s likely you are setting goals without looking at how you spend your time. So let’s start there.
Write down what you are doing or think you are doing every day, week, month. Really think about this and take the time to document your life this way. Be as quantitative as possible. Then categorize those activities. After you do that, ask yourself: do you want to spend the same amount of time doing those activities in the future? If you don’t, do you want to spend more time or less time?
Let’s take someone named Alison. Alison thinks her goal is to be a better parent. However, when she looks at what she is doing, she finds she is spending most of her time working to become a partner in her firm. That’s her real goal: promotion.
Now Alison is multifaceted, as we all are. She doesn’t need to abandon one goal to work on another. She decides she does want to get promoted, but she does so in the context of also being a better parent. So she shifts some of her time and focus towards more parenting, then works to track that over time to see whether she really has internalized that as a goal.
The time and effort and focus you spend on something tells you what your goals are. Even if you don’t know those are your goals. I discovered this some time ago when I was tracking my todos in an app called Remember the Milk. I was the opposite of Alison. I thought I wanted to get promoted, but I spent most of my time focused on being a good parent and not enough on getting promoted. Eventually I was content with that. I accepted that I would like to get promoted, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my parenting time to that. And I liked my work as it was. From time to time I would be disappointed to see others rise in the organization while I stayed the same, but quickly I thought that was ok. I was meeting my goals.
Likewise, I ran marathons for a long time, and I thought my goal was to run more. But over time I realized that what I got out of marathon running had slipped away. It just became a chore and my goals changed from being a marathon runner to being healthier. Maybe as my life changes I’ll go back to running marathons.
There is a famous poem by Kenneth Koch called You Want a Social Life, With Friends that addresses this:
Koch is strict here but the thinking is the same. Setting goals helps you move forward in life only if the goals you set align with your values and interests and the time you spend on that. Trying to do everything is difficult when resources are limited. So think about the time you have and set better goals.
For more on setting better goals, read this piece.
(Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash)
There is a good review of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, here, in Osservatore Romano. I recommend you read it in full.
One thing in it that struck me was that in order to be good to our sisters and brothers, we need to make time for them. This is what the Good Samaritan does: he takes time to stop and care for another. We need to do this too if we are to be good.
Consider your week next week. How will you take time for others. Not yourself, but how will you give your time to make others better? In doing so, you will be doing good.
There are many ways you can be good. You can give financially. You can be virtuous. But you can also do good if you take your precious time and give it to others so they can be better, and in doing so, you can be better too.
(The image is from this piece on the Good Samaritan. I recommend you read that too. It’s insightful, and a reminder of what a powerful parable it is.)
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