Tag: Personal Development

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

 

Happy Holidays!

Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any December-based Festivus, I hope you are having a safe and happy holiday season, full of cheer, love and lots of merriment.

I’m taking this week off to rest after a packed semester, but I’ll be back next week to kick off the New Year.

I’ll see you in 2017.

Much love, and 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

My 2016 Reading List

2016 was a fairly productive year for me compared to 2015.  At the end of every year, I reflect on my life and sketch out a rough vision of how I want to tackle the new year.  Last year, I noted that I had read relatively few books (and completed even fewer).  Don’t get me wrong, I was reading a lot, but it was all online and typically blogs and articles.  My shallow reading was going strong, but my slow, in-depth reading with books was waning.

I felt a sense of shame at this realization – I had completed undergraduate and graduate studies in the Humanities, but my commitment to arts and letters was dismal at best.  I decided to use 2016 as a year to focus and develop myself.  Using a combination of physical and audio books I have, as of this post, read 41 books, which amounts to a hair under 13,000 pages of content.

See below for the complete list.  If I finish anything else before the end of 2016, I’ll ensure to issue an update.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Note – eagle-eyed readers will count 42 books on my list.  There is a book on my list that for personal reasons I’m not publicly disclosing.

Title Author Pages
Deep Work Cal Newport 304
The Way of the Superior Man David Deida 207
Intentional Living John C. Maxwell 288
The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg 416
The 4-Hour Work Week Timothy Ferriss 416
The Imperfect Board Member Jim Brown 224
Mate Tucker Max 384
The Art of Asking Amanda Palmer 352
The War of Art Steven Pressfield 190
The Way of Men Jack Donovan 192
Brave New World Aldous Huxley 272
Living in More Than One World Bruce Rosenstein 244
Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 168
Start With Why Simon Sinek 256
Antifragile Nassim Taleb 544
Zero to One Peter Thiel 224
Level Up Your Life Steve Kamb 288
Quiet Susan Cain 368
The Willpower Instinct Kelly McGonigal 288
The $100 Startup Chris Guillebeau 304
The 4-Hour Body Timothy Ferriss 592
Leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek 256
A Thousand Naked Strangers Kevin Hazzard 288
Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here Ryan Estrada 132
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey 432
Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology Elaine Marieb 656
Born To Run Christopher McDougall 304
No Fears, No Excuses Larry Smith 272
Doctored Sandeep Jauhar 288
Wisdom Stephen Hall 352
The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene 496
Awaken the Giant Within Tony Robbins 544
Tribes Seth Godin 160
Smarter Faster Better Charles Duhigg 384
Purple Cow Seth Godin 244
Free Prize Inside Seth Godin 256
Ego Is The Enemy Ryan Holiday 256
I Will Teach You To Be Rich Ramit Sethi 266
Thinking Fast And Slow Daniel Kahnaman 512
Born For This Chris Guillebeau 320
Total Pages Read
13,487 (revised)

Addendum

After this post went up, I added two more books to my list to round out 2016:

Title Author Pages
God is not Great Christopher Hitchens 320
Left of Bang Patrick Van Horne and
Jason Riley		 228