Tag: Goals

Signal and Noise – Facebook, We Need to Talk

Continuing the emergent theme of January for this blog, I thought this post could discuss some of the thoughts that have been mulling around in my head for the last few months.  Once again, in the spirit of pulling back and simplifying, I’ll briefly comment on some thoughts I’ve had about Facebook (specifically) and social media (generally).

This won’t be a think piece about the problems with the various platforms, their social responsibility, the degree to which they are or are not responsible for the behaviours of their users, etc.  There are many great articles written on those topics that have spun out as a consequence of the American Presidential election late last year.  I have nothing new or clever to add to that conversation.

Instead, I want to focus on my relationship with social media – how it has affected me and my behaviour.  You, my dear reader, may or may not agree with my attitude towards social media.  That’s ok.  I’m not speaking to any sort of norms here.  I don’t think people should adopt my views if they don’t want to.  Your relationship with social media is wholly bound up in a different set of lived experiences which is not guaranteed to overlap with mine in any meaningful sense.  I will be describing my experiences here.

Birthday 2015

In 2015, I set a challenge for myself to cut back on my Facebook use.  I felt that I was spending far too much time endlessly and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook.  This challenge was motivated by a desire to be more productive in my life.  I wanted to consume less and produce more; I felt this was important for me to grow as a person.  Facebook was a constant and daily consumption habit where I binged on updates from my network of friends and family.  It was less about a sense of fear of missing out and more about seeking updates to what people were doing and things they found interesting.

So, on my birthday in 2015, I deleted the app off my phone.  The experiment wasn’t very successful as I logged into Facebook using my phones Chrome browser (I had legitimate reasons to need onto the site initially since my job at the bar uses a Facebook group for scheduling shifts).  When I didn’t log off from the browser, I essentially was left with Facebook on my phone.

It took until around September of 2016 to wise up to my usage, and I deleted the Chrome app from my phone.  For the last 4 months of 2016, I abided by the spirit of the original challenge and things were good.

Birthday 2016

Every year at the outset of my birthday, on the stroke of midnight, I deactivate my Facebook account for 24-hours.  I do this for a number of reasons.  It allows me to be more present in the day.  It allows room to reflect and introspect.  I don’t have a constant deluge of notifications from people wishing me a happy birthday (especially from people who only message me once a year because Facebook tells them it’s my birthday).  And it removes a mindless activity so that I can do more productive things with my birthday, such as exercising and volunteering.

This year was no exception on that front.  What was unique was that my birthday was buttressed against several days of travel and time with family.  For the better part of  the next five days,  I was busy with family and Christmas, and was never near a computer with enough time or the desire to check Facebook.  I realized only after my family expressed concern that I had possibly unfriended them (and my fiancee joking that she was no longer engaged to someone on Facebook) that I finally logged back in.

Upon logging back in, I realized that I hadn’t really missed the experience.  The first few days did have me missing Facebook in moments of boredom, but otherwise I hadn’t really missed using the service.  I was actually a little sad that I was giving in and returning to the service because it became a game to see how long I could go without using Facebook.

I also realized that I felt happier in my ignorance.  Well, that’s not true because I still followed the news and read articles; I kept up with current events.  But in not paying attention to the micro-updates in peoples lives and in unverified news, a weight had lifted from my psyche.

Signal and Noise

When I reflected on these thoughts, I realized that I should maintain some element of distance from using Facebook going forward and disengage.  My rationale has changed a little bit since 2015.  I still seek to favour production over consumption, but since the election, using Facebook has become, for a lack of a better expression, less fun.  Through a combination of fake news, false information on memes, politicization, activism, expressed attitudes and values I disagree with on many levels, and uninteresting updates, I don’t enjoy using Facebook like I once had.

What I realized is that the signal-to-noise ratio had skewed too far in the noise direction.  I personally don’t find Facebook all that useful outside of some very limited cases.  I was having a hard time filtering out all the distractions.  There are a number of reasons for this that, if I genuinely sought to address, I could fix.  I could start hiding posts, or reporting fake news.  I could unfriend people I don’t associate with, or I could hide posts and stop following updates from people in my network.  I could curate the experience to better suit my tastes.

There are two big reasons why I don’t follow this route.  First, I’m conscious of trying to avoid setting up an echo chamber that reflects back only things I agree with.  I value diversity of opinion, even if I disagree with it.  What I’m seeing on Facebook is not opposing viewpoints expressing themselves constructively.  This may make me a bad person, an abuser of my privilege, or a bad ally, but I don’t find value in only associating with people who narrowly share my values and beliefs.  It’s especially bad when I agree with the cause, I agree with the conclusions, but I disagree with the message or argument presented.  I value setting aside individual differences for common purposes.  I value good, sound arguments.  I value constructive input and critiques.  I value testing assumptions and arguments to ensure the burrs are smoothed out.  A consequence is that this does end up challenging my beliefs less; on that front, I acknowledge the consequence of my action.  I don’t have an adequate response to this and I need more time to reflect on it.

But the second reason why I don’t follow this route is that I don’t feel invested in the desire to fix the experience I have on the platform.  Instead, I’m much happier to step back from the noise and seek other areas of my life where I can boost the signal of things that matter to me.  I can focus on paying for news that I value (I recently purchased a subscription to The Economist, and a subscription for The New Yorker was gifted to me for Christmas).  I prioritize time with friends and family.  Being present with them is more important than cursory updates.  And I have the time to satisfy my desire to be constructive – making things, collaborating with friends, and learning.

To me, Facebook is an endless well of distraction.  Are there useful things on there?  Sure.  Are there important things on the platform?  Absolutely!  The activism and awareness campaigns that have popped up in the last year are a testament to how the platform can be useful to getting the conversation going for a mainstream audience.  I would never want to take that away from the experiences of others.  What I have a personal issue with is what the behaviour represents about me.  Facebook is a crutch I use to distract and occupy myself when I’m bored or procrastinating.  I seek out the notifications and the feedback.  I seek out validation and approval.

Facebook is built specifically to take advantage of this biological system in our brains.  I won’t go so far as to say it’s addictive, but I will say that the site is engineered to get people to frequently come back to the platform multiple times per day through posts, notifications and suggestions.  It leverages my desire for novelty and new content is frequently just a refresh away.

The same can be said for other platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.  I suppose where my bias shows is I’m less critical of Instagram because I can curate my experience better around my interests and hobbies.  On top of that, I find the experience purer on Instagram because I use it to share things I do and find interesting in my everyday life.  These are things that I experience and these are things I make.  It’s constructive, rather than consumptive.

Moving forward, I’m seeking to engage less with social media.  I don’t hate or think Facebook to be evil.  It’s a tool like any other.  My goal is to scale back my use and be more mindful.  I want to signal-boost the important things and tip the scales away from consumption into something more constructive.

Produce, not consume.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Quitting and Simplifying

A theme is emerging for January for me, so let’s continue our exploration of simplifying and cutting back.  My last two posts discussed how I’m shelving my goal to be a paramedic.  Getting engaged and reflecting on 2016 didn’t just lead me to the conclusion that I need to orientate my future towards stability for my fiancé and I.  I also reflected on how I felt at the end of the year about my life.

I concluded that I felt tired.

The Cult of Busy

I hate that I’m so busy.  I fully admit that I sometimes use my busyness as a humblebrag to signal my “hustle,” but truthfully, I rationally know that being busy isn’t a good thing.  When you are busy, the things that you prioritize begin to slip.  When you are busy, you sacrifice sleep.  When you are busy, you half-ass things.  When you are busy, you miss deadlines.  And on, and on.

By the end of December, I was a walking zombie just marking time until business wound down for all of my projects.  I was average around 5.5 hours of sleep per night and felt perpetually in a daze.

Mid-last year, I received an offer to be the Vice Chair of a grants committee I was on.  It was a potential huge step forward for me – it would be an important role for a prestigious community organization, it would groom me to Chair the committee, and it would give me access to important community movers and shakers.  Getting that kind of network exposure is like gold for the young professional.

I replied honestly that I was interested but unsure if I could commit more than one year, on the assumption that I would apply to a paramedic program in February 2017, which could lead me to leaving the region for school.  We set the conversation aside in the interim until I had a better idea of what my future looked like.

In December, the conversation came back up.  Having just proposed to my fiancé, I hadn’t yet had a chance to consider how the proposal will concretely change the next few years of my life.  I asked for the rest of the month to think things over and I’d get back to the Chair.

Being Strangled by Busy Creep

In reflecting on 2016, especially the last 4-months, I realized that my calendar suffered from busy creep.  I had over-committed myself and said yes to too many things.  Keep in mind, I love novelty and experiencing new projects.  I jump at the opportunity to learn something new and help friends out.  But in my quest to learn, I had lost sight of any sense of vision for what I wanted to accomplish, and through a death-by-thousand calendar entries, I had stretched myself too thin.  Working full time at the College, teaching, and working some nights at the bar was enough to keep me occupied, but I am also the Treasurer of a Board, regularly podcasting, blogging, maintaining a long-distance relationship, etc.  I was building a huge sleep deficit, gaining weight, and consistently making bad decisions (YouTube being my drug of choice late at night).

I tried simple hacks to help me, such as installing a light timer on my wifi router to force myself offline.  Truthfully, the only thing I needed to hack was my calendar.  After thinking it through, I realized that after having completed a full term as a grants committee member, now was a good time to bow out gracefully and resign my post.  I drafted a letter to the Chair, explaining my situation, and resigned from the committee.

A Time For Reflection

The Chair, being a wonderful person, accepted my resignation without question and offered to keep the door open if I wished to return in the future.  I valued my experience on the committee, but I realized that it didn’t fit with my ultimate and immediate priorities – my health and my relationships.

I still feel bad about the resignation.  I had hoped that my anxiety and reservations about sending the email was the result of actually sending a resignation.  However, after sending the email, I’m still feeling down about the decision.  It was a great opportunity and could have lead to some amazing future possibilities.  Worse yet, I feel like I’m quitting or letting others down.  I know rationally that this is not true, but I can’t shake the feeling nonetheless.  I suppose this is the equivalent of a busyness detox – the feeling will fade over time as I start to feel more in control of my time and life.

The grants committee was only a tiny portion of my calendar.  It amounted to about a month and a half of moderate work per year.  Cutting this from my plate will not be the magic solution to my problems.  I see this as the first step to getting my house in order.  Truthfully, I don’t really have a lot of direction at the moment.  Once I decided to shelve paramedicine, I lost my direction and momentum.  I need to find something else to aim at and work towards professionally.  That is one area that will require some reflection.

But more basic that that, I need to reflect on my values.  I don’t have a good answer yet as to what I feel my core values are at the moment.  Without that level of self-awareness, I’m likely to allow unfocused busyness to creep back into the picture.  Without values to act as a filter, I’m likely to accept whatever opportunities come my way irrespective of whether they add value to my life or further my goals (or if they are time sinks that steal time away from more important things).  Because something sounds cool, or because a friend asked me shouldn’t be the only reason why I say “yes.”

Once again, I don’t have a pithy way to wrap this up; this will be a work in progress for me.  In the meantime, it’s probably time I get back to work.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Thoughts on Letting Go of the Pursuit

Last week, I announced that I’m shelving the pursuit to be a paramedic.  This decision was made on pragmatic grounds: with trying to start a life together with my fiancé, I need to focus on setting down strong roots and establishing financial security.  Changing careers while both supporting my partner and building stability is far more risk than I’m willing to tolerate.  Good things are happening at work right now, and I enjoy a generous paycheck and benefits.  If I hope to continue to pay off my existing student debt in a timely manner, contribute towards the mortgage, etc., my best option is to stay put for now.

Having said that, deciding to not go the paramedic route is not without its share of doubt and heartache.  When I started entertaining the idea that I wouldn’t apply off this February, I felt like I was giving up.  I had carefully laid out a timeline and a series of objectives that would take me step-by-step to my destination.  To give up now would mean I failed in my goals.  I felt like I was a failure.

I’m largely over this mindset now.  What helped me re-frame this was a passage out of Peter Pan.  I stumbled across this quote on a Medium post late last year and jotted it down in my notebook.  From time to time, I read the passage to remind myself that I have more important obligations than what I want.  Sometimes, you need to re-evaluate your goals to ensure you’re staying true to your priorities.

*Side note, my awesome fiancé, whom I read this quote to, put a copy of Peter Pan (the book) in my stocking for Christmas as a result.*

“There are many different kinds of bravery.  There’s the bravery of thinking of others before one’s self.  Now, your father has never brandished a sword nor fired a pistol, thank heavens.  But he has made many sacrifices for his family, and put away many dreams.”

Michael: “Where did he put them?”

Mrs. Darling: “He put them in a drawer.  And sometimes, late at night, we take them out and admire them.  But it gets harder and harder to close the drawer… He does.  And that is why he is brave.”

It’s important to remind ourselves that there is no shame in letting go when things change.  My decision to become a paramedic was made when I was in a different place in my life, but I’m no longer in that place.  There is certainly nobility in staying the course, even through uncertainty and change.  But it’s important to reflect on your priorities, and act in accordance with what is most important to you.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

New Year and New Updates

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a fun and safe weekend.  This year’s celebration was the smoothest we’ve seen at the bar in a long time.  No fights or accidents, and everyone left before close.  From the staff’s point of view, it was a great way to ring in the new year.

A big bit of news happened for me in early December – I got engaged!  After months of scheming, everything came together and my fiancé and I are busy with wedding plans.

The decision to pop the question also forced me to think more about my future, specifically the next 3-5 years.  While we are not planning to wed until late 2018, the added commitment of marriage raised some questions in my mind about what I need to focus on in terms of priorities.

When I started this blog, it was meant to help me focus on my learnings on my way to becoming a paramedic.  A lot has happened since then, and it would be bad if I ignored the contexts at play.  In the beginning, I was a bit down on myself, felt aimless, and I didn’t like work.  2016, while a crappy year for the world, was a good year for me in that I focused a lot on improving myself.  In that time, my conditions at work have markedly improved, and I feel better about myself and where I am in life.  The only thing that hadn’t shifted was my career – I was still running under the assumption that I would be applying off for a paramedic program and would restart my career in two year’s time.

Getting engaged, however, forced me to think critically about this.  With my fiancé just starting out on her own professional career, us moving in together in the near future, and planning for a wedding, it seems like a bad decision for me to drop the security I currently have and take several steps back for the sake of a new vocation.

Maybe if I were a few years younger (I turned 30 in December), I could have pulled this  gamble off.  But for the present, I will be putting my paramedic aspirations on the shelf to focus on building what I have in front of me.  Down the line, there is always a chance that I could make a pivot into medicine but for the interim, this is not a good choice for me.

Which now raises the question of what is happening to this blog?

Short answer: nothing.  I will keep the blog for the foreseeable future.

Long answer: a change in theme will need to be made.

Obviously this won’t be a medic blog anymore.  At the very least, this blog has been very broad, so I don’t see a lot changing in terms of content.  I’ll still post on topics that are relevant to me and my interests, such as personal development, teaching, etc.  I don’t know what the changes will amount to, but if you are enjoying my content now, then you can rest assured that things won’t change materially.  In time, you may see a new coat of paint and a some rearranging of the furniture.

However in the mean time, check back in each Monday for a new post.  Let’s keep this thing going!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

Reflection – The Cost of a Lack of Routine

I’ve posted a few times recently about how I’ve been incredibly slack on keeping up my (lack of) fitness habit.  The addition of teaching was enough for me to abandon fitness as a priority.  There are obvious costs associated with this, such as poorer health and eating habits, but there is also the financial cost that most people are aware of, and I don’t think I’ve really appreciated the magnitude of until now.

Since July, I’ve been paying for my membership to the gym without going.  This cost shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.  At various points since July, I’ve been aware that the fees were being applied to my credit card each month.  On reflection, I realized how much of a “death by 1,000 cuts” scenario this is.  During each month’s charge, I rationalized that the cost is fairly low.  Because it wasn’t breaking the bank, it was easier to excuse the bad habit.

Yet, it all adds up:

August – monthly fee $11.30
September – monthly fee $11.30
September – bi-annual equipment fee $20
October – monthly fee $11.30
November – monthly fee $11.30
December – monthly fee $11.30
 Total (CAD): $76.50

If you don’t include any interest accrued, I’ve spent a little over $75 to not go to the gym.  There are two ways of looking at it.  Either, $75 has been the cost of inaction (not going, or not cancelling my membership), or $75 has been what I spent to sit at home and do other things (opportunity cost).  Regardless of how I frame it, I’m out $75 with little to show or account for it.

I suppose the obvious next step is to create a solution to this problem.  With the new year and my birthday rapidly approaching, it makes sense to use this as an excuse to erase the bad history and start fresh.  I want to, however, learn from this experience.  It’s important that I reflect intentionally because otherwise I’ll be doomed to repeat the behaviour.

I don’t have a nifty solution to this at present.  I merely wish to make this observation public to hold myself accountable and get myself thinking about what I can do about it.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Odysseus’s Wifi

I have terrible self-control in certain areas of my life.  Chief among my vices is the habit of staying up late on the internet (YouTube is my drug of choice).  While I rationally know staying up late is bad for me, I act contrary to my best interests with each rationalization of “just one more video.”  Suddenly, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and my lunch for work still hasn’t been made.

In an effort to combat my akrasia (Greek for “weak will”), I’m taking a leaf out of Odysseus’s book.  In the Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus is faced with sailing past some Sirens.  In antiquity, Sirens were dangerous mythological creatures who would lure sailors to their doom using their song.  Odysseus wanted to hear the Siren’s call, but knew he would be unable to resist their spell.  In a brilliant move, Odysseus had his crew stuff their ears with beeswax to block out the song, and Odysseus had himself lashed to the ships mast to prevent him from leaving the ship.

Odysseus and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper, c. 1909 – jigboxx.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9684835

The story of Odysseus is held up in modern behavioural economics and psychology as an exemplar of not only acknowledging that humans are notoriously bad at acting in their own best interest, but also in showing us that we can take steps to overcome our weaknesses.  Odysseus, rather than holding on to illusions that he will make good decisions in the future, instead opts to build systems of accountability that will save him from erroneous beliefs about the strength of his will.

Inspired by his story, I have adopted a new system to resist my own Siren’s call.  I hooked my wifi router up to an indoor vacation timer and set it so that every night at 11:45pm, my internet gets shut off.  The systems stays off while I’m at work and turns back on at 5:00pm as I’m getting home from work.

This is obviously not a fool-proof system.  I can still manually override the unit if I want to reconnect to the internet, and truthfully I have done just that when I wanted to finish creating my slide decks for class and upload them to the e-learning system the college uses.  So far, I have not overridden the system for personal reasons, so on that front, at least, it has been a success.  Another obvious problem is that while my internet is shut off, I can still distract myself with other screens, such as the television, my Gameboy, and most critically my phone.

Nevertheless, I rate this systems as a success in getting me off the computer earlier than normal.  In previous posts I discussed how I am waiting for the term to wind down so that I can begin to focus on other, less pressing tasks.  This is just a first step in getting me to make responsible decisions that are aligned with my goals and values.  Sometimes, we need to lash ourselves to the masthead to stop us from doing stupid stuff.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – Breathing Room

This term has been killer for me.  I say “term” as a reflection of my added teaching load I’ve had since September.  I’ve been musing recently that I think I finally hit my stretch/break point.  Balancing all of my separate obligations is finally starting to test my ability to keep all the balls in the air.  In sum, these are the priorities I can think of off the top of my head:

  • Full time job at the college
  • Part time job at the bar
  • Part time job teaching
  • Treasurer of the ethics board I sit on
  • Podcasting
  • Maintaining this blog
  • Daily art project
  • Monthly mutual-improvement group meetings
  • Maintaining a long distance relationship
  • 2016 reading challenge (42 book finished as of last night)

These are just the things I’m managing to keep in the air.  Of course, to make space for these things, I’ve had to slack on some other priorities, namely:

  • Sleep (I’m averaging about 5.5 hours per night)
  • Nutrition (scaled back for budget reasons)
  • Gym (I’ve had a hard time justifying going for myself when I should be working)
  • Video game time (yes, this is a weird one, but I want more guilt-free downtime)
  • Other social time with friends (I rarely see friends outside of work or meetings)

These aren’t meant to be humble-brags.  I’m not one that thinks of “busy” as a badge of honour.  I know that busy people are notoriously unreliable in my circles.  There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person.  This is perhaps true in some cases, but in my experience the vast number of busy people tend to be chronically flakey on showing up and late on deadlines for deliverables.

Thankfully, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.  As of writing, I will be delivering my last lecture this week, and by December 21st I will be done with all course work grading.  Shortly after that, I’ll be on holidays from the College until the new year.  I’ll still have shifts at the bar, but those are select evenings.

Other aspects will change as well.  Podcasting will go on a holiday hiatus; the daily art project ends  at the end of December; and the long distance relationship will move back to a local distance relationship.  I will finally have some breathing room.  I plan to use that time to reflect on my obligations and regroup.  My birthday is coming up, and I always take that time to reflect on the past year as well as my current state of affairs with an eye towards my future.  This will be a well-deserved holiday break, when I finally get some breathing room.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – Off and On the Wagon (Of Fitness)

Welp!  That streak didn’t last very long.  Last week I wrote how I proudly went to the gym the previous week, and how I was looking forward to trying to maintain that pace.  I’m sad to report that I did not go to the gym last week.  And it’s important that I stay transparent about this.  It’s been hard trying to find a balance these last few months.  When I wasn’t working three jobs, I found it relatively easy to go to the gym at least twice per week.  Now, I can’t manage going once.

I can’t blame the job fully on this.  Part of the reason for my poor performance is the lack of sleep.  I have poor discipline to go to bed at a reasonable time, so things tend to compound from there.  Poor sleep leads to decision fatigue, and then it becomes easy to excuse all sorts of bad habits – further bad sleep, poor nutrition, procrastination, etc.

These failures of mine have been harsh but incredibly instructive.  I’ve learned two important things about myself: I’ve learned where my limit is for how much I can juggle at any one time, and I learned a bit more about my priorities.  I learned that I need structures and rules in place if I have any chance of sticking to a plan for progress.  Present-Me is very bad at self-regulation and is prone to making all sorts of bad decisions.  Present-Me is short-sighted, lazy, and pleasure-seeking.  I want to prioritize health and fitness, but when it’s time to deliver, my priority tends to favour pleasurable activities (I’m looking at you, YouTube!).

A tired cliche is that the first step is to admit you have a problem.  In this case, I have a problem when it comes to managing myself.  Not sure where to turn from there, but at least we’ve drilled down to the bedrock.  Let’s see where I can take this.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Fitness Update (Small Milestones)

I finally returned to some non-zero fitness activity last week!  It’s not exactly awe-inspiring, but it’s better than what I’ve done in the past two months.  My last log entry for the gym was August 25th.  In August, I had two trips to the gym, and then nothing prior to that since before my trip to Scotland in July.  It’s a gross understatement to say that I fell off the wagon.

Last week, I forced myself to hit the gym for a light workout on Monday.  “Light” in this case means limiting myself to 60-80% of my previous set weights, and only committing to 3 sets of each exercise.  I knew I was going to have muscle soreness this week, so I went easy on myself in order to re-acclimate myself to lifting.  While I’ve lost some momentum compared to July, it was good to return to the gym.

My second round of exercise this week was a home-based round on the rowing machine at my girlfriend’s place.  I did a fairly leisurally row of a little over 5 kilometres in 30 minutes.  Again, I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, but merely to dip my toe back into the game and see what happened.

The real test will be whether I continue my progress into next week.  The hard part about overcoming weakness of the will is shrugging off the guilt you feel when you know you mess up.  The best remedy I’ve come up with is to forgive myself for my past mistakes (not going to the gym) and moving on to do better next time.  The only thing you can do is to reset the counter and start from scratch.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan