Monthly Archives: March 2023

Realistic targets

Whenever I see people get on diets or start jumping into crazy workout schedules I think about how long they will last? Is this a lifestyle change or a temporary change? And often the ones that are temporary are focused on unrealistic targets that they are very unlikely to get to.

Have a listen to James Smith’s TikTok about ‘Optimal’ targets (oh, and be prepared for some f-bombs and colourful language):

I wrote a post recently about optimization rather than maximization, and it was somewhat similar, but this really hits the nail on the head.

Good habits, optimizing small patterns of behaviour, and living a good life without ridiculous sacrifices or hours upon hours of relentless dedication. Not 3 hour a day workouts, but at least 45 minutes five days a week. Not broccoli and chicken every day, but being thoughtful about junk food and making smart choices.

Not unachievable targets, but realistic goals over long periods of time where you’ve maintained good habits for eating, sleeping, and working out. Fit for life, not looking fit for my holiday bathing suit. Healthy living, not perfect diets and workouts. Because when the bar is set too high, when you believe the fitness magazines that tell you how to get a 6-pack in 6 weeks, you are not seeing thé tremendous sacrifices those abs require. We need to set a realistic destination, then enjoy the journey.

Time for a break

It’s the last day before March Break and it’s going to be a long day. My final ‘to do’ list is quite big and my goal is to get it done and not take it into the break. Sometimes these holidays sneak up on me, like this one. Other times I am counting down the days. But despite the fact that this two-week holiday seemed to come so quickly this year, I can tell that I need a break.

It’s a reset for me. A chance to rest my aching back. A chance to listen to a fictional novel. An opportunity to visit my parents. And most importantly, a chance to switch work off for a little bit. The last semester of school from March to June is always a whirlwind of non-stop activity and this break is the preparation for it.

My brain won’t totally let work go on this break, but unlike a weekend, I will be able to go a couple straight days without thinking about work. I’ll put my vacation response on email, and I’ll not be checking email daily. I used to not do this, but over the years I’ve realized that when I actually let myself take a break, I come back more rejuvenated and ready for the homestretch.

So while I’ve got a long day ahead of me, I hope to leave work at work and take some time completely off this holiday. The test of this will be my daily writing… how much of it will show that work is still on my mind? We’ll know in a couple weeks!

Counting time

It my wife’s birthday today and so we celebrate one more trip around the sun for her. Actually we’ve been celebrating all week, I have been giving her small little gifts for ‘birth week’, something I started when we were dating. It’s fun to have our own little traditions to celebrate special events. My wife and family sing happy birthday on the phone, my less musical family don’t torture each other with that tradition.

Tracking time is something that we’ve done for almost as long as humans have existed. It would be important to know how long until a baby arrives, or when winter is ending. Recently, scientists discovered that dots near animals on cave drawings indicated the gestation period (in lunar months) for the animals. These cave drawings are some of the earliest forms of writing, and show both a sharing of knowledge and tracking of time dating back far before we thought humans did such things.

We have been fascinated by the passing of time for a long time now, and birthdays are one of those things that we track and celebrate. With grown up kids, I miss the unfettered joy of a child on the morning of their birthday, or Christmas. I loved to see that excitement, and anticipation of presents. A celebration of the the earth rotating one more time around our sun. One more time to be grateful for what we have… the gift of life, family, and reasons to celebrate together.

Feeding the (AI) brain

I worry about the training of Artificial Intelligence using the internet as the main source of information. One of the biggest challenges in teaching AI is in teaching it how to group things. Unless a group is clearly identified, it’s not a group. That’s ok when counting items, but not ideas. What is fact vs fiction? What is truth vs a lie vs an embellishment vs an exaggeration vs a theory vs a really, really bad theory?

There are some dark places on the internet. There are some deeply flawed ideas about culture, race, gender, politics, and even health and fitness. There are porn sites that objectify women, and anti-science websites that read like they are reporting out facts. There is a lot of ‘stupid shit’ on the internet. How is this information grouped by not-yet intelligent AI systems?

There is the old saying, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’, and essentially that’s my concern. Any form of artificial general intelligence is only as good as the intelligence put into the system, and while the internet is a great source of intelligent information it’s also a cesspool of ridiculous information that’s equally as easy to find. I’m not sure these two dichotomous forms of information are being grouped by AI systems in a meaningful and wise way… mainly because we aren’t smart enough to program these systems well enough to know the difference.

The tools we have for searching the internet are based on algorithms that are constantly gamed by SEO techniques and search is based on words, not ideas. The best ideas on the internet are not the ones necessarily most linked to, and often bad ideas get more clicks, likes, and attention. How does an AI weigh this? How does it group these ideas? And what conclusions does the AI make? Because the reality is that the AI needs to make decisions or it wouldn’t be considered intelligent. Are those decisions ones ‘we’ are going to want it to make? If the internet is the the main database of information then I doubt it.

Pain and discomfort

For the past couple years my back has been pretty good. By pretty good I mean that I’m often feeling discomfort, but I’m not feeling pain. I exercise, stretch, get deep massages, and visit my hot tub to keep my back as healthy as possible. But sometimes I trigger some pain and it builds.

Yesterday was rough. My mid back felt like I was constantly flexing and all the muscles around it tightened to protect my back from crashing. Sitting or standing, I felt no relief. On the pain scale, I was only at about a 3/10, but on the discomfort scale it was a full 9/10. And while the discomfort scale can be more tolerable than the pain scale, I haven’t had this level of discomfort in a long time and it wore me down.

After work I had a chance to go out with some of my favourite people for dinner, and I went home after appetizers. I couldn’t even hang out with awesome people. Instead I went home to take pain relief and sit in my hot tub.

I feel better this morning. Today I will stretch for a long time, and hopefully my back won’t seize up again. It can affect my capacity to deal with things at work and at home. It wears me down when I’m in constant discomfort or pain. And although I separate the two, I think constant discomfort can be as bad as constant pain. It isn’t as acute, but it wears me down just the same. It’s just semantics really, discomfort and pain are both miserable scales when you have to deal with them.

Optimize not Maximize

Maximize your profits, grow your busy, success is just around the corner, and when you get around that corner greater success is just around the next corner. There is always more to get, more to gain, more to achieve.

But at what cost?

What is your time worth? What happens when you grow too big to feel like a community? Where does the next dollar come from: cheaper parts, lower cost labour, a drop in quality at greater than maximum production?

And again, what about your time? How many hours do you put in? How many hours when you are not working is your brain still focused on your ‘to do’ list, or on your work in general?

Getting bigger isn’t always getting better. Sometimes it’s smarter to optimize than to grow. Sometimes your current customers are more import than your next customers. Sometimes your time with family and friends should be the most important thing you focus on.

But these two things are not mutually exclusive. Optimization can help build your business, profits, and even a positive working environment… and improve your time management. A model of optimization helps you achieve more with less, and allows you to improve in more areas besides a focus only on getting bigger.

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What is the good life?

Map of Mathematics

I came across this Map of Mathematics in a TikTok where people working in the field of Mathematics were all sharing how their fields intersected different parts of the map. Here is the video:

I love how the concepts and fields of study connect and interconnect.

The the video starts with a ‘stitch’ of a Tiktok user asking, “Did everyone know that Mathematicians are, like, discovering new Math?”

This plays into a recent post in which I state that Math is ‘Discovered more than invented‘. There is so much more to discover, and I believe, thanks to my conversations with Joe Truss, that geometry is the foundation of Math. But math is a hard conceptual language with which to understand the geometry… and if we study the geometry we can understand the universe without having to do the hard math. Oh, and if Mathematicians better understood the geometry they could discover new Math a little faster.

In the Map of Mathematics, Geometry is the key.

Sometimes a push is needed

I’m not a fan of the cold. I share this fact openly. I’ve also shared that I do a weekly walk with my buddy Dave called the Coquitlam Crunch. Well here is my text conversation with Dave last night:

I’m going to be totally honest, I was fishing for the opportunity to skip the Crunch. But here’s the thing… it was fine! I dressed warmly, we had ‘clamp-ons’ to put over our shoes to grip the snow, and I’m really glad that we did it. That was crunch number 92 since we started back in January 2021.

It’s good to have friends that don’t let us have the easy out. So often our anticipation and avoidance is actually worse than doing the thing we need to do. And when we don’t want to do it, friends can either help us step up, or they can keep us in the ‘easy zone’. Easy to do and good for us are seldom the same path.

The right friend knows when to push… and that friend is far better than the one letting you off the hook, or worse yet, talking you out of the better path.

Holding on unnecessarily

Sometimes it’s hard to let go.

Someone asks you about your day, and the first thing that goes through your mind is the thing that bothered you most.

“How was your meal?” It was really good, but…

An inconsiderate driver doesn’t let you merge and you are agitated for the next 20 minutes.

It takes practice letting go of negative thoughts. We hold on to unhelpful experiences unnecessarily. We almost cherish them. ‘Look at me. Look at how I’ve had to struggle. See what I have to put up with. Recognize my hardship.’

The real hardship is self-inflicted.

It’s not what happened to you, it’s what you hold onto. It’s also what you let go of.

What was the best part of your day? What was your favourite part of the meal? Boy, I’m glad I’m not that guy that didn’t let me merge, poor guy probably isn’t living his best life… I’m grateful that most people I deal with aren’t like him.

When you are used to holding on to the hard parts of life it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to transform your way of thinking to a more positive outlook. Accept a compliment, don’t downplay it. Find someone to thank. Choose to let go of the frustrating part of the day that you want to bring up and relive, and instead remember a shared laugh, a kindness, a success.

It’s not what happened to you, it’s what you hold onto. It’s also what you let go of.

Dreams and goals

A few years back I had hoped to learn how to do an unassisted handstand for at least 30 seconds. But after a while I stopped training for it. I know I have the strength for it now, but I simply haven’t put the time in practicing the necessary skills. I could tell you all kinds of reasons why I never followed through, but the reality is that anything I share would be an excuse I could have avoided or worked around. So what’s the real reason? It was a dream but not a goal.

I like the idea of it, I’m just not willing to do the work. In the time since then I’m fitter, stronger, healthier, and I’d even say more capable. But I didn’t give it the time it needed. I didn’t put in the required work. Maybe one day I will, but not right now.

Sometimes it’s hard to admit to yourself that a dream was just that, a lofty idea about something that might happen, and not an actual goal. But admitting this is quite comforting in a way. I have hit a lot of health-related targets in the past few years, I’m happy with my progress. Sure I could beat myself up about failing to achieve a dream… or I could realize that not every dream is something I have to strive for.

This isn’t trying to make the point to give up your dreams, or to strive. On the contrary, it’s to recognize that when you have too many things you are dreaming about and trying to bring into reality the less likely you are to achieve any of them. I think the questions to ask are:

Do I really want this?

How hard am I willing to work for it?

What’s the next step?

And,

What’s the plan?

Because a dream won’t become an achievable goal until you can answer these questions, implement a plan, and develop the habits that dedicate time to your dream. Some things are better left as dreams, while others should get the time they deserve. But that shouldn’t stop you from dreaming… just know the difference.