Tag Archives: advice

Doctor’s visit

I recently went to the doctor to request bloodwork. It had been a few years since my last one. The results were not great. With high cholesterol being a hereditary issue on both sides of my family histories, my results show concerning levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Levels weren’t great last time, and they are worse now.

I’m going to change my diet, but I’ve also booked an appointment with my doctor and I’m probably going to go on statins… A decision for my doctor to make, not me. The reality is that bad cholesterol is a silent killer because you don’t feel buildup of plaque and fatty deposits in your blood and so a medical emergency can be the first hint of how bad things are. That’s why things like blood tests are so important. That’s one of many reasons why doctor visits are important.

I work hard to stay fit and healthy. Obviously my diet could be and should be a bigger part of that equation. But that’s not enough. Another factor is involving health professionals.

My dad wore a “I haven’t seen a doctor in decades” badge of pride. It was stupid. He was not quite 80 and his body was that of an unhealthy 95 year old. About 5 years ago we went to see my uncle, dad’s younger brother, perform in a band at a local pub. When my uncle introduced dad to a friend of his, the friend asked my uncle if my dad was his dad… I’m not exaggerating about the age comparison I just made.

I’m excited about the diagnosis tools of the future. There will be many ways for us to monitor our health and even be preemptively warned of pending issues. But for now, and increasingly as you age, visit your doctor regularly.

Maintain and Sustain

If you asked me, before today, I’d say that I was slumping with respect to my daily workouts. But what does that really mean? For many, slumping would mean that I’ve ‘fallen off the wagon’, or that I’ve stopped my habits and routines and need to get back into them. That’s not the case. I’ve only missed 2 workouts out of the first 32 days of 2024. That’s not a slump, that’s a great habit. One of those 2 days was a choice, the other was an unexpected day trip to the island, and I was either with people or traveling from 6:15am to after 11pm. So why was I thinking I was slumping?

Well, even though I’ve been pushing myself on my daily 20 minute cardio, my weights workouts have been tough. I tend to only do one muscle group every day, and so it’s not like I’m in my home gym for a long time. I’m usually in and out in less than 45 minutes, including my cardio and 10 minutes of stretching. So, basically I’m talking about 3 sets of 1 exercise, sometimes a bit more, but not much more. And this one part of my workout has been, well, ‘slumpy’. Normally I can get to my last few reps and really push hard. I can focus and push and grunt my way past the mental pressure to stop, and eek out reps that are unpleasant but very beneficial for growth and/or increases in strength. Recently I just don’t have what it takes to get those last few reps out, and I stop when I should be pushing through… that’s my slump, and it has been a challenge since the Christmas holidays.

The reframe for this, after talking to my buddy after our Saturday morning Crunch walk,  is that this is not a slump. He framed it as ‘the space between’. That didn’t work for me, because I think of those between spaces as sacred times that are productive. Still, I understood the message he was sharing, that I was beating myself up about not making gains, when I was still committed and showing up! I’m not running a sprint, I’m working on perseverance and the long game, and so 30/32 days so far this year is better than the start of any year so far. That’s not a slump.

We live our lives with expectations of always improving. The whole 1% better every day, fake it ’till you make it, push, persevere, strive, and even ‘try-try again’, are all messages that we have to keep going and we have to be better than we were yesterday. These make for wonderful quotes on posters, but the expectation is unrealistic. What about the spaces in between the 1% improvements? What happens there really matters. Are we maintaining and sustaining our previous gains or are we slumping and letting things slide?

I’m not slumping, I’m just not making fast gains. I’m maintaining my positive habits, I’m sustaining my routine so that when I’m both physically and mentally ready I can and will be able to make small, incremental improvements. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: small, incremental improvements. I’m no longer that guy that went on holidays in March of 2018 and couldn’t see the strings on my bathing suit because of my belly paunch. I look better at 56 than I did at 36, (well maybe not my hairline, but everything else).

Right now I can’t seem to get that extra push at the end of my workout sets… the sets I do almost every single day, even when I don’t want to do them. I’m not slumping, I’m just in between gains, I am maintaining and sustaining awesome habits and more improvements are in my future. The more I let go of the expectations, while keeping the positive habits, the happier and healthier I’ll be!

Advice for everyone, and no one

A frustrating if not comical aspect of social media are lists and advice that are so banal they actually hurt to watch or read. I just saw a content creator give her “Top 3 tips for getting back on track with your credit.”

This was to:

1. First create a budget. Stick to it. And update it regularly.

2. Make cutbacks to save at least 3 months worth of monthly income.

3. Only spend what you already have.

The worst part of this ‘great advice’ is that it was sponsored by a bank. This was basically a paid advertisement from a savings bank, spewing trite and wasting our time and attention.

Here’s my advice to quit smoking: Don’t buy cigarettes.

Here’s my advice to lose weight: Eat less, exercise more.

Here’s my advice to get more sleep: Go to bed earlier.

Here is my advice to giving advice: State the obvious and you’ll always be right!

…But the advice won’t be taken, because that’s not really advice. It’s hopes and dreams. It’s laudable, wishful thinking. It’s not actionable for anyone who the advice is directed at. I’m reminded of a Derek Sivers quote, “If information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

I don’t know too many billionaires with perfect abs, and facts disguised as advice won’t get you there either.

Interview time

Yesterday I interviewed 3 people for a teaching position. I took extensive notes. All 3 interviews were good, and I could see value in hiring any of them. I ranked the candidates 1-3 then I sent my notes to a colleague. I didn’t share any personal information with the colleague, just my notes. He ranked them in the reverse order that I did.

Very interesting.

I looked over my notes again, thought more about how the answers fit with the position and I can totally see what my colleague saw. Now I’m really stuck. I have no idea which way I’m going to go? I have one more interview today, then I’m going to call my colleague and hear his thoughts.

I don’t think bias plays into it. Both the candidate he and I liked are the same gender, and he had no idea based on the answers shared. But this really has me questioning my skills at hiring. Again, it’s hard because all 3 candidates are good. I think my bias, if I have one, might be experience, and both of these candidates have a lot more experience than the one we didn’t choose, what my colleague made me realize when reading over my notes was how much more relevant his choice’s experience was compared to my choice’s.

My lesson learned from this is that if I’m going to take notes, I need to take the time to read them. When I’m asking questions and trying to capture their responses, I’m not committed to analysis of the answer. Also, when I’m interviewing, the order I interview in matters because I have less to compare to with my first versus my last interview and that may create bias.

I need to do the final interview today, then I need to take the time to go over my notes one more time with an objective eye… and I’ll also call my colleague and confer with him. It’s hard to make a decision like this yourself when you don’t have a gut instinct or glaringly obvious choice to make. Sometimes it’s good to ask for help and get a different perspective.

Attend and amplify

One of the guided mediations that I listen to is Jay Shetty. This morning the topic was ‘Making Memories’. His message: Be present and attend to the experience, amplify your awareness of what you are feeling in the moment, and you’ll have better access to those memories. They will be richer and more powerful, if you attend and amplify.

One of the downsides to this is that traumatic and trying times also tend to heighten our attention and be amplified. That’s why they get played back in our minds so vividly. Then there is the playback that never happened, the dealing with a crappy situation over and over in your mind, wishing you did something differently. Sometimes that playback feels almost as real, and just as frustrating.

Those are the moments I most attempt to control. I work on seeing them in the distance, and in black & white. I try to make them grainy still photos and forgettable. Too many people that don’t deserve my thoughts and attention can take both because dealing with them is a ‘rich’ experience in my mind. Becoming aware if this is key. Recognizing that they are not worth my time and energy is the trigger to un-amplify. Then I have more time to appreciate all the positive things that I should attend to and amplify.

I need a good book recommendation

What’s your favourite, “I couldn’t put it down (or stop listening) book you would recommend?

I listen to a lot of books in a year. I barely read much before switching to audio. I’d come home and try to read but I spend so much time looking at screens in a day that even if I chose to read, my eyes would get tired after 10-15 minutes. Switching to audio, I can listen during my workouts, while in the car, when eating lunch on my own, and even doing house chores. I can get hours in over a week, rather the occasional minutes reading.

But to start this year I’m listening to a book that, while I’m enjoying it, I can only listen to short bursts then I need a break. And in between listening to this, I’ve been listening to podcasts, and I’m looking for a good book to listen to.

I tend to listen to books I learn from until Christmas break, March break, and summer, when I listen to fiction, but right now I’m thirsty for a good, hard-to-put-down action/thriller. I like sci-fi, fantasy, and spy novels, and enjoy novels no matter the age or gender of the protagonist. Some recent things I’ve enjoyed listening to include:

Caliban’s War, book 2 of the Expanse series, (but not ready to go to book 3).

Many books in The Grey Man series (do NOT watch the awful movie that butchers the story and creates a final battle that screams of bad moviemaking and screenwriting). I love this series but 7-8 books in I need a break.

The Bone Witch… fabulous storytelling!

The Bobiverse entire series and everything Dennis E. Taylor has written.

And Artemis, sharp, witty, and fast paced sci-fi that begs for a sequel.

So there are some of my shares… what would you recommend?

The challenge of hindsight

Recently I had a student come to me for advice. He played a joke on a friend, and then kept the joke going digitally on a digital discussion board. It wasn’t a bullying issue, there wasn’t a power struggle. But the kid who came to me recognized that his friend was struggling a bit and he felt that his joke added stress and added to his struggles. He just wasn’t sure how to fix it.

I could see and hear the anxiety that he had gone too far with the joke and hurt his friend. There was a lot of guilt, and the awareness that he could have contributed to a friend’s struggles was really burdening him. He felt awful. I think he came to me partially because he wanted advice and partially because he felt he should somehow be punished for hurting his friend. I mentioned that there was no power struggle and so it wasn’t bullying, but in this kids eyes he did something that hurt someone so it was bullying.

I tried to put him at ease by talking about how hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy for him to see that he took the joke too far now, but it would have been much harder to see this at the time. And I said that the fact that he could look back and see that now was actually a good thing. Good because it shows he’s reflective and cares for his friend, and good because he has the power now to make things better. But that it’s easy to see this now only by looking back and being thoughtful.

I then guided him through a good apology. He wanted to make it about the struggles his friend was going through as part of the apology. I suggested this wasn’t an ideal approach. A version of “I’m sorry you have problems that I added to” doesn’t instil a sense that the conversation is about an apology. Instead I suggested he focus on his own behavior. “I’m sorry that I took the joke to far, I didn’t mean for it to be hurtful in any way, but I think it was. I apologize and I’ll be more thoughtful next time.”

At one point when I was finishing up with him he said, “I’m sorry if I seem distracted but the longer I’m here the longer my friend has to wait for my apology.” I had to hold back a little chuckle as I let him go to talk to his friend.

This is a good kid. He used hindsight to see that he had done something wrong to a friend, but then he beat himself up for not seeing his mistake sooner. How often do we all do this? We look back at our actions and feel guilty, stupid, or embarrassed for what we did. Then we magnify those feelings and feel even worse. Our hindsight gives us insight into how we could have and should have acted previously… but now it’s too late. Now it feels like all we can do is feel bad.

…Or we can be humble, recognize our mistake, and try to make things better. The challenge with hindsight is that we can’t undo our stupidity, we can only pretend it didn’t happen, beat ourselves up about it, or actually try to face the mistake we made, own it, and be willing to make amends or ‘make it right’. This latter choice isn’t the easiest path to take, but it is the best path to take and the faster we do it, the less time we spend worrying or feeling bad about it.

The Thoughtful Ones

“We pay too much attention to the most confident voices- and too little attention to the most thoughtful ones.

Certainty is not a sign of credibility.

Speaking assertively is not a substitute for thinking deeply.

It’s better to learn from complex thinkers than smooth talkers.” ~ Adam Grant

Of course confident voices can also be credible voices. One can speak assertively and still think deeply. A complex thinker can also be a smooth talker. This isn’t a dichotomous contrast but rather a recognition of why we should pay attention to a confident voice. Or, when to seek out the opinion of someone not as in the limelight or as extraverted, yet thinks deeply.

There are too many confident people in the world that are loud but not worth listening to. This is the group to be worried about: The shallow thinkers that are vocal and garner more attention than they deserve. Seek out the deep thinkers and pay attention to them no matter their inclination to be assertive and heard.

Challenging Advice

Cal Newport, author of several books including, Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, was on the Sam Harris podcast. I listed to it over the past 3 days and a couple interesting things were discussed.

First of all, Cal has no social media profiles, despite studying social media as part of the research work he does. While I think that’s interesting, I don’t think that I’d want to do that myself. I have drastically reduced my time on social media over the past few years, with time on all sites going down significantly to barely a few minutes a day… other than Tiktok which I will spend up to 30 minutes maximum a day Monday to Thursday, and longer on weekends. Tiktok is more like television to me than social media because I don’t spend any time trying to look at my specific network and let the algorithm decide what I watch next. I watch almost no television and consider TikTok an alternative option to the TV. But while I’ve lowered the social of social media use, I’m not ready to delete or ignore the accounts I have.

The second thing Cal said was that he refined his ideas around doing Deep Work to:

  • Do fewer things;
  • Work at a natural pace; and
  • obsess over quality.

This sounds great! It’s just not workable in most jobs. If I had a job where I could do this, I’d never want to retire. But the reality of my job, and many other management jobs, is that I simply don’t have that luxury.

I want to do more things, because most of the time I spend on things I need to do rather than what I want to do. My pace is often dictated in a reactionary way, rather than a pace I actually choose. And while quality really matters, I’m often working on timelines that force me to do what’s necessary and then move on.

I’ve discussed this before, the challenge of doing ‘what you need to do’ consumes so much time and energy that there is little of either left for doing ‘things you want to do’. And so it’s not easy to take Cal’s advice. While it is laudable, it’s not realistic to try to achieve. I think writers and artists and similar creative endeavours can aspire to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality, but most people simply don’t have the luxury to do so. Still that doesn’t mean these things aren’t desirable… I just don’t know anyone who works at a school that can say these are attainable goals.

Let it go

When my youngest daughter gets stressed about something I will often start to sing ‘Let It Go’ from the movie Frozen. I’m an awful singer and she’ll roll her eyes at me. Sometimes she even beats me to the punchline, “…And don’t start singing Let It Go… please.”

If it’s a serious topic, I won’t start to sing, but when she is perseverating on a small issue, I let it rip, nice and loud, “Let it go, let it go!” Just that verse, I honestly don’t know the song that well and have always struggled remembering music lyrics.

What’s interesting though is that it’s always easy to give advice like that to others, but not so easy to feed the same advice to yourself.

There is the saying, ‘Death by a thousand paper cuts’ to suggest no one wound that is fatal but rather the accumulation of many wounds that finally leads to your demise. Sometimes stresses and challenges are like that. No one stressor is too big to handle, but not being able to let go of a thousand little stressors feels overwhelming. Or, life just gets busy with many many stressors then one or two slightly bigger stressors get added and it all seems too much. Just those couple issues on their own would be fine, but they add to an accumulation of things you didn’t let go of and suddenly these slightly bigger items seem gigantic.

It’s not easy to let even little things go when they are sitting on your brain. And sometimes you can’t let go of the problem or challenge, you actually have to face it… and that’s the thing that stresses you out. But the time and energy you spend worrying really doesn’t help. So be it a song, exercise, a quote, or even meditation, the trick is not to let the stressors live in your brain rent free. Stress as you deal with them or ‘let it go’ until you can deal with them. Just don’t think avoiding them altogether works. You aren’t actually letting them go, you’re just not letting them accumulate and consume your thinking when you aren’t dealing with them.

And if this was easy, there would be no reason to get this song stuck in your head.