A few years back, I stumbled across Bob Ross videos on YouTube. His Joy of Painting series made painting seem accessible and fun, and it stoked in me a desire to try it out. My experience in creating art mostly was concerned with drawing and sketching. Only once (in high school) did I attempt to paint a picture (a large Spider-man poster, which was meant for us to experiment with painting along one side of the colour wheel). Painting has largely been intimidating for me to try until I watched Bob Ross.
A friend who paints suggested I try starting off with an easy medium, like acrylic paint, since oil painting can be both challenging and dangerous if you don’t take the right precautions. I made a New Year’s resolution to try out painting before the end of the first quarter, and in February I found a local art store that runs beginner acrylics classes. For four weeks, you learn lessons from a local artist and complete a painting each week to take home.
This week will be the last class. I’m sad that it’s over already and I’ve really enjoyed the experiences so far. I’m hoping the store sets up the intermediate class soon, as I will gladly pay to attend that class as well. When you sign up for the beginner class, you are given the option to purchase a starter kit with some paints, brushes, and canvasses. I’ve already started buying additional supplies, such as more paint colours, a medium to extend the acrylic drying time, a new kneadable eraser, and more canvasses. Below are the paintings I made from the first three weeks of the course.
I’ve even started experimenting with paining at home – last week I attempted my first run at mixing flesh tones to paint people (I hope to attempt a self-portrait in the near future).
My first post went live on April 21st, 2016 and, if memory serves, I have managed to post at least once every week since then.
The original motivation to start this site was three-fold. First, I vainly wanted to snag up the domain name in the off-chance that I wanted to use it in the future. Second, I wanted an excuse to force myself to write regularly. It had been a few years since I finished my master’s degree, and I found that my writing skills had softened over time, so I wanted a reason to regularly practice those skills to keep them sharp.
The third, and primary reason, was to chronicle and reinforce my path towards becoming a paramedic. I had intended to document the application process of returning to school, the time spent as a student, and eventually the transition into a career. I also wanted to use the website to discuss and teach the concepts I was learning because I believe it is a good mode of reinforcing the material I would have learned in class (an effective way of learning is being forced to teach it to others).
The unfortunate result is that I’ve been maintaining this site up to 100 posts without a clear purpose or direction of where I want to go. This is amusingly also the case with what I want to do career-wise.
I had my performance appraisal at work last week, and my boss said she was “super happy” with my work and contribution (there are a few areas of growth we identified, but otherwise it was a great appraisal). When we discussed my future avenues of growth, I was hard-pressed to come up with the next steps of where to go next beyond wanting to take on more responsibility in general. I have a few concrete skill sets that I want to work on, but nothing that lends itself to an obvious career choice.
I suppose this blog is an accurate reflection of my career trajectory. On the one hand, the status quo looks good, clean, and polished. On the other hand, it lacks direction and purpose. However, the blog also affords me the space to stop, reflect, and document things as I go.
I don’t have an answer as to where I’m intending on going next, but at least I can share my muses along the way.
This book came as a recommendation from a work colleague. He’s the one who has gotten me into Terry Prachett, and recently he suggested I would enjoy this book. I’m only a little ways in, so I can’t comment too deeply, but I’m enjoying the neurological look at what happens when we read that this book provides. I’m also enjoying the case being made for reading as a tool to grow our cognitive faculties.
I am going to get some flack about this from some of my friends. Jordan Peterson is a divisive figure in Canadian discourse. While I don’t align with him on some of his political views, I first came across him through his taped YouTube lectures. It was because of him that I started reading Carl Jung’s work and took an interest in the notion of stories being an important route to deriving meaning in life. I’ve also enjoyed Peterson’s visits to some of the podcasts I’ve listened to, so it seemed only natural to check out his book. I’ve been enjoying the book, and I personally feel like I’m getting something out of it. I don’t think this book is going to be for everyone, but it speaks to me on a level that I find compelling.
Much like the book above and the next entry, Principles is making the rounds through the self-help/business/personal development spheres. It’s been a bit of a slower read because I need to take time to digest his ideas and insights. Nevertheless, I’m finding his book interesting and useful as it provides a framework for decision making and business. I try to be wary of advice dispensed by the rich and successful since it tends to not be very applicable outside of the lucky breaks the author found themselves in, but I find this book to be fairly objective and refreshingly introspective. I think Dalio’s principles make sense and are a good guide to follow.
What can I say? I enjoyed all of his books so far (including last year’s Tools of Titans), so I naturally pre-ordered this one when it was announced. Much like how Tools of Titans was a book that piggy-backed off of his podcast guest’s work, Tribe of Mentors follows a similar route by running the same set of questions through various big names in different fields to a.) see what their answers are; and b.) to find what commonalities are found in aggregate. One side of me rolls my eyes at how simple the idea is (and how little relative effort it would take to make the book), and yet the other side of me appreciates what Ferriss has done in creating the book. His book intends to give you access to some of the best mentors in the world, and he delivers it in full.
I knew relatively little about Fermi before I started this book. I knew that he was a physicists, that he was attached to the Manhattan project, that there is a paradox named after him, and that he’s known for a particular kind of method for problem-solving and estimating. However it was the last tidbit (the Fermi problem) that nudged me to buying this book. I’m only about a third of my way through the book, but it’s been a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a genius who, when you broke things down, was necessarily all that smarter than everyone else. Much like Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi had discovered ways of learning more effectively, which made him able to tackle interacted problems from the first principles of a field. He worked to understand the rules of the system, which in turn allowed him to combine them in new and insightful ways. I really enjoy reading biographies, and I’m glad I picked this one up.
Last week SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket into space. The mission put one of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadsters on a trip to the sun, and verified that a private corporation could fund the launching of rockets that brings us one step closer to making space travel a possibility for the average person.
The last time NASA put a shuttle into space was 2011. Since then, the shuttle program has gone quiet, as NASA has cooperated with other international space agencies to send astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.
To be honest, I almost missed the launch. I was vaguely aware that SpaceX was set to test another launch (after a previous attempt failed in explosion), and only joined in on waiting for the launch with about 24-hours to go. But something about the launch spoke to me. It was exciting on a level I haven’t felt in a long time.
I suppose I was too young to appreciate the shuttle program when it was in full swing. I have been to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and I have see a shuttle up close. I’ve even met former astronauts, but I never felt the same excitement that I felt last week as I (while in a meeting taking minutes) watched the rocket’s launch sequence ignited the jets and sent the tube of fuel skyward. I felt emotional, and somehow connected to the quest to illuminate the cosmos to uncover its mysteries.
While it’s too early to say that SpaceX has achieved something unique or set humanity on a course towards space travel, I can say that for a brief moment last week, a lot more things seemed possible.
If you have a chance, I highly recommend watching the launch and learning more about the program. The final minute of the launch sequence starts at the 21 minute mark.
The job I have at the college is my first full time job after I finished university. Prior to the position I’m in, I have worked only full-time hours on contracts and a smattering of part time jobs. I thought, like many others, coming out of university that I knew what it would mean to have a job, be an employee, and work responsibly. I wouldn’t say I was unprepared to enter the workforce, but it would be charitable to say that I had a lot to learn, and many beliefs to update.
This is, in part, why I decided to occasionally write thoughts in a series of posts loosely connected with the theme “Skills Worth Developing.” There are many hard skills that employees should pick up over time to help them do their jobs better and advance in their careers. Organizations like Coursera, Udemy, Lynda, etc. are excellent resources to help one pick up those kinds of skills. But many other skills (usually dubbed “soft skills”) are usually picked up through experience and self reflection. This blog serves both to force me to write, but also to force me to make permanent any self-reflections I’ve had, and these reflections might be valuable to others.
The last time I discussed Skills Worth Developing, I discussed the merits of storytelling as a communication tool. This time, I want to reflect on a phrase I heard a lot when I first started working – “That’s not my problem” or “That’s not my job.”
You might be wondering why I lump this in with the notion of skills, instead of some other attribute, such as attitude. True, something like this will overlap with one’s “attitude” while on the job, but I view this as a skill because it’s a habit and ability that can be modified over time, practiced, and strategies can be employed to use it in the workplace. Therefore, I loosely connect it under the skills area that should be developed and practiced over time.
One other observation I want to make is that this skill – avoiding falling into the “That’s not my problem” mentality – is something I exercised as a beginner. I think this is a fantastic skill to develop early in your career, but I’m not entirely sure of it’s value when you are well-established in your role. The value of this skill is that it increases your value to the company when you are still differentiating yourself. The same can not be said for someone who is either well-established in their company or field, where their value is tied directly to their ability to focus on problems that they can uniquely solve. In those instances, it’s probably a better strategy to limit distractions from your primary role and duties.
And so, we come to the problem of “That’s not my problem.” I found early on that many employees in a work environment can take on the “not my problem” mentality for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they were burned in the past and now refuse to extend themselves. Some feel overworked and overstretched. Some are lazy. For whatever reason, they resist helping others in their duties.
I find two issues with this kind of mentality. First, it goes against the spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and teamwork. The workplace is a team of employees who are working towards common goals to advance the interests of the organization (while hopefully advancing their own personal interests in parallel). Any time someone says to a coworker “that’s not my problem,” what they are in fact saying is “your problems aren’t important enough for me to take an interest.” They end up placing themselves above the interests of their coworkers and the organization. I’m not saying that this is wrong per se – I am sympathetic to the ideas that this mentality is easy for organizations to exploit, and that there is no moral imperative to place the company’s interests above your own, so you should guard against it taking advantage of you. What I am saying is that taking this as a default position undermines the team. Everyone is supposed to work together to solve problems and strive to the company’s mission. If you don’t want to do that, what’s the point of working at that company? I would hardly think that it’s just in service of the paycheque.
The second issue I have with this attitude is it closes you off to development. I directly attribute my success so far to my willingness to learn outside of my prescribed job. By helping others with their tasks (so long as it does not prevent me from taking care of my own job area), I am able to develop new hard skills and learn about areas laterally and vertically from my position. I am better able to see how my role fits within the larger context of our department, which continuously exposes you to new opportunities for growth and development. You become more valuable to the team and you strengthen your ties with your coworkers. When you are just starting out, this is a valuable way of integrating yourself and setting yourself up for advancement.
When you ignore the impulse to say “that’s not my problem,” you acknowledge that your coworkers are people with their own problems, concerns, hangups and worries, while also setting yourself up as a person of value for the team. It is a perfect opportunity to step up and be noticed in your workplace.
That is why I think resisting the impulse to say “that’s not my problem” is a skill worth developing.
This is it! I’ve finally hit the end of the sleep challenge and I can finally look back at a year of data and see if I can spot anything interesting from the data. This post will give the quarterly update from October through December, and then I will look at the results from the entire year.
For those just coming on-board with this post, in 2017 I set out to track my sleep each month with the target of sleeping for at least 7-hours. I used a Fitbit Charge HR to track my sleep and I gave monthly updates on my progress. I also used a few quarterly updates that looked at data over longer periods of time to see what sorts of trends and patterns I could extract from the results. While I wanted to try and maximize my sleep, in truth I am terrible at keeping a nightly routine, so at the mid-point of the experiment, I set the goal of trying to get at least 10 nights in each month where I hit my target of 7-hours.
To see a recap, you can go to the individual posts below:
First, let us look at the fourth quarter’s results.
Fourth Quarter – October through December
Note: 1’s denote nights where I hit my target.
The fourth quarter results fall in line with what I’ve been seeing over the course of the year. Sundays prove to be the most consistent night of 7+ hours of sleep, followed by Saturday. Monday usually gets a high number of hits, but this time around it appears that I’m not sleeping as well when I transition from weekend to work week. I don’t have an explanation for this, other than I probably am going to bed too late (as opposed to lost sleep due to anxiety of going to work the next day).
And now, time for the final reveal!
Sleep Results for 2017
The grand total for the year are:
January – 4
February – 8
March – 6
April – 7
May – 4
June – 7
July – 11
August – 11
September – 9
October – 8
November – 7
December – 10 Total: 92
Out of the 365 nights of sleep for 2017, I hit my target 92 times, for a 25% success rate. This is a very strict number, which reflects poorly on the overall experiment, but one bit comfort I take from this is that, as I have pointed out a few times over the course of this challenge, the data is skewed when we look at the time I spent asleep, versus the amount of time the Fitbit tracker tracked me as asleep. Any amount of sleep disturbance or restlessness meant that the device wasn’t counting it as sleep time. So, while I might have been asleep for over seven hours if I had any kind of restless sleep, the quality sleep tracked came in under 7-hours.
Is there another way of seeing the data to determine if the 25% rate is overly skewed?
Time spent Sleeping
We can adjudicate this by looking at the actual time I was asleep, versus the target sleep. This way, any nights where I slept more than 7-hours would pull my averages up and cancel out some of the nights where I slept less than 7-hours.
*Note: for simplicity, I rounded the sleep values to the nearest hour.
For 2017, the Fitbit tracked me as sleeping 2,137-hours. If I assume 7-hours for all 365 days, this would give us 2,555 hours of sleep. Viewed from this perspective, I hit 84% of my target sleep, with only a 418-hour deficit of sleep spread over the 12 months.
The problem with tracking only the successes throughout the year is that it ignored any sleep that falls under 7-hours. Month over month, my progress tended to looked bad and reflected poorly on my ability to set goals and maintain progress. While it’s true that I was failing in hitting absolute targets of sleep, the presentation almost suggested that if I didn’t hit my sleep target it was because I wasn’t sleeping at all.
So, while I was only 25% successful in hitting targets, I was able to get 84% of the sleep the target would imply.
One note of caution – if I’ve learned anything these last two years, it’s that I’ve learned and reflected on what it feels like to be sleep deprived. Running a theoretical sleep deficit of 418-hours for a year might not seem bad, but in practice is something to be concerned about. Sleep deprivation has consequences that affect me in many ways, such as my ability to resist temptation, my productivity at work, the likelihood that I will exercise, and my interpersonal interactions with friends and family. There was one time where in my sleep-deprived state, I let a door swing shut before my dog was fully through the threshold, and it caught him in the rear paw. Despite a yelp of pain from him, there was thankfully no physical damage to his paw. Still, I felt terrible about my carelessness and it was a reminder that my ability to focus and pay attention is compromised when I don’t sleep.
Moving Forward
Tracking my sleep for this blog was an interesting experience. I do not plan to continue giving regular updates as I progress through 2018, though I will still be monitoring my progress in my personal notebooks. I found a lot of value in seeing the aggregate results. The monthly updates were mostly in line with my intuition, but it was still good to objectively see how poorly I am with sleep.
It will be an ongoing work of progress to do better. The main takeaways from this experiment are that,
1.) I’m terrible at maintaining a disciplined nightly routines to go to bed at a reasonable time;
2.) working at the bar, even 2-nights per week, dramatically impacts my sleep during the week; and
3.) I need to pay more attention to the things in and out of the bedroom that cause disturbances in my sleep (such a the dog jumping on the bed, evening alcohol consumption, and potential sleep apnea due to my weight).
There are many avenues I can explore to improve the quality and quantity of sleep I get each night. Perhaps, I will explore them in time. However, it’s time to put down the measuring devices and enjoy a bit on unquantified time.
Another year of reading has finished, so it’s time to take stock of how I did for 2017. While I’m not an advocate of reading purely for the sake of speed or volume, I do challenge myself to see how many books I can get through during the year, if for nothing else than to ensure I’m carving out time to read. For my 2016 results, check back to my post on What I read in 2016.
This year, I managed to get through 44 books and almost 14,000 pages, which is on par with my results from last year. I posted my top list of books I read this year a few posts back, if you want to check it out.
I would say a little more than half of these books are audio books, as I decided to get an Audible subscription, and a friend has been kind enough to supply me with Terry Prachett books. I have significantly picked up on the amount of fiction I’m reading, which was a deliberate choice since I noticed I consumed a lot of business and self-help books last year.
Title
Author
Pages
1
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
272
2
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
Mark Manson
224
3
Leaders Eat Last
Simon Sinek
368
4
Awaken the Giant Within
Tony Robbins
544
5
$100 Startup
Chris Guillebeau
304
6
Tools of Titans
Tim Ferriss
736
7
American Gods
Neil Gaiman
558
8
The View from the Cheap Seats
Neil Gaiman
544
9
The Consolations of Philosophy
Alain de Botton
272
10
Catching the Big Fish
David Lynch
208
11
The Colour of Magic
Terry Pratchett
288
12
The Path to Purpose
William Damon
240
13
The Light Fantastic
Terry Pratchett
288
14
The 80/20 Pinciple
Richard Koch
288
15
The Complacent Class
Tyler Cowen
256
16
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Alain de Botton
208
17
Equal Rites
Terry Pratchett
282
18
No Fears, No Excuses
Larry Smith
272
19
Mort
Terry Pratchett
272
20
The Death of Expertise
Tom Nichols
240
21
Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss
288
22
Sourcery
Terry Pratchett
336
23
On Writing
Stephen King
288
24
The Happiness Project
Gretchen Rubin
368
25
Reading the Humanities
John Greenwood
156
26
Spark
John J. Ratey
304
27
Wyrd Sisters
Terry Pratchett
336
28
Managing Oneself
Peter F. Drucker
72
29
Pyramids
Terry Pratchett
308
30
The Checklist Manifesto
Atul Gawande
240
31
Total Recall
Arnold Schwarzenegger
656
32
Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual
Jocko Willink
208
33
I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had
Tony Danza
272
34
Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett
416
35
Eric
Terry Pratchett
160
36
Side Hustle
Chris Guillebeau
272
37
The Productivity Project
Chris Bailey
304
38
Moving Pictures
Terry Pratchett
400
39
Mating in Captivity
Esther Perel
272
40
Finding Ultra
Rich Roll
400
41
Reaper Man
Terry Pratchett
288
42
The Art of Learning
Josh Waitzkin
288
43
Machine Man
Max Barry
288
44
The Road to Character
David Brooks
320
Total:
13904
All in all, I am very happy with the results, and I am looking forward to tackling the growing stack of books I have in my office for 2018.
My November sleep check-in fell short of my target of 7-hours, so I was hoping to rally stronger in December to close out the year-long experiment. Let’s see how I did for December.
10/31 times (December 1st was cut-off on the far left of the image)
Success!
I managed to hit my target of 10 nights, but only just barely. This is thanks in large part to my time off from work from December 23rd through the end of the year (5/9 nights). One item of note is that I also managed to get 3 nights on the 14th, 16th, and 17th (Thursday, Saturday and Sunday), which is unusual for me.
On the other hand, I still had long stretches of time where poor bed-time habits and a lack of routine caused me to fall short of my target. My lack of intentionality nearly lost me the challenge for another month. This has been a persistent problem with the sleep challenge all through 2017, which suggests a lack of priority in sleep overall (though I’ll leave that reflection for the 2017 Sleep Review).
At the very least, it feels good to close 2017 and kick off 2018 on a positive note.
On the internet, December marks the time of year where everyone releases lists of their top favourite things from the past year. It’s my turn to add to that mighty tradition and announce my top books that I read in 2017. I will post my total list of books read in 2017 in January. For those curious, here are the 44 books I read in 2016.
Here are my top books that I read in 2017.
List Criteria:
For this post, I have three criteria notes.
The book didn’t need to be published in 2017. I’m nowhere near able to keep up with the new material getting pumped out every year, so for my list, I will include anything that I happened to read and complete in 2017.
Having said that, I will only count books that I read for the first time in 2017. You’ll see in my overall list of books for the year, there were a few books I revisited that I read in 2016.
Finally, the biggest criteria for “best” is books that stuck with me – they gave me knowledge or wisdom that I use, or that has lasting mental/emotional impact. This is admittedly a wishy-washy criteria, so to summarize, these are books that I found valuable to have read and I will likely re-read in the future.
Honourable Mention
The Art of Learning – Josh Waitzkin
This book goes on the honourable mention list because I haven’t finished reading it as of posting. It’s really good, though, and would have made the list had I finished it in time. Waitzkin is a bit of a wunderkind, having won chess championships as a child, then becoming a national push-hands championship, and now (post-book publication) has become a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I mention this because it gives credit to the idea that he’s given a lot of thought to the learning process, and his book provides many insights that I will use both as a student and as a teacher.
I read relatively few works of fiction this year, but American Gods stuck out for me. It’s been a while since I felt engrossed in a work of fiction the way I was for American Gods. It was my first introduction to Neil Gaiman’s work, and it certainly won’t be my last. I’m looking forward to checking out the television series.
This is a book that I implemented at work with my role in program updating and renewals. I took the 80/20 principle and started thinking about the relatively few problems that lead to massive delays in the program review process in order to find solutions to the workflow. I didn’t get a chance to implement many changes before the Ontario College Strike put things on hold, but I’m looking forward to continuing the process when things even out a bit.
I wish I could say that I implemented the lessons from this book, but truthfully, I found it hard to absorb all the fine details from my first pass in the audiobook. This book will be a prime candidate for a re-read in the near future, as I will be able to take my time and work through the material to assimilate the useful information in my work.
I think this one will end up being one of those books I pick up and thumb to a random page for an aspirational kick in the pants. Jocko’s main lesson is that, paradoxically, if you want more freedom, you must get more disciplined. That means doing what you need to do when you need to do it. As he says, if you want more money, you need more financial discipline. If you want a body that doesn’t let you down, you need to have discipline in diet and exercise. As a former US Navy Seal, having this guy telling you to get on it, and why I have no excuses to stop is pretty powerful, even from the written word.
This might be a cheat, but I simply couldn’t pick a favourite between these two. Both have compelling stories, both have memorable characters, and both are awesome. Mort is a story where Death looks for an apprentice, and Pyramids tells the story of a prince-turned-assassin who is recalled to rule when his father dies in a land resembling ancient Egypt. Fantastical stories full of charm, and I laughed out loud while listening to them both. Therefore, they make the list in a shared spot.
Keep an eye out for my complete 2017 list in January. In the meantime, I really need to get on my Christmas shopping!
A Paramedic's Notebook 