Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’ve been feeling ‘off’ on top of issues getting a good night’s sleep, and that has thrown my schedule out of whack. Compounding this, I just joined a gym and the just over 30 minutes commute time to get there and back has thrown off my morning routine. I already get up at 5am and I’m not pushing this to 4:30 to compensate. So, I need to readjust my schedule. On top of this, I’m just 2 days away from winter vacation so my entire routine is about to get upturned anyway.
So what gives way to this? When there is a major disruption in the smooth running of my routines and habits, what breaks? Well, if I can help it… nothing. No, I won’t skip a day writing. No, I’ll never skip 2 days in a row working out. No, I won’t accept that this is a crazy time and I’ll just get back to my schedule when there is time.
That said, I’m probably going to end up moving something to the evenings. I actually have given up a puzzle I do each morning called Strands, and I don’t do Wordle first thing in the morning anymore. But more importantly, I won’t let scheduling be the reason that I don’t get my personal goals done each day.
I’ve said before that it’s the hard days that make you stick to a habit, but it’s also the way you handle your habits when your schedule doesn’t cooperate. When there is a metaphorical disturbance in the force, and things are not as they should be, these are the times habits are made or lost. Because habits are easy when they are neatly stacked into the routine of the day. But take away that routine and suddenly the habits take a lot more effort.
I guess I’ll just have to ‘use the force’… of momentum, of expectation, and of commitment to make sure that while my schedule and routines are totally disrupted, my habits will consistently prevail.
I recently joined a gym and got a few sessions with a trainer. It’s interesting being taught by a guy younger than my daughters, although I have to say he has an impressive amount of knowledge. The first time I met with him he asked me to track my food, and suggested the app MyFitnessPal, which I dutifully downloaded that night and started using it.
I know how important food is in taking care of myself. I saw the impact of supplementing my protein with a morning shake and paying attention to how much protein I take in. The results have been impressive. And yet I have been blissfully unaware of both the nutritional value and portion sizes of my meals until I had to track what I ate in an app.
I had no idea what 2 cups of pasta looked like on a plate? Not a clue what 2oz of pistachios looks like? Not a hint what the calorie or protein amount is in a Booster Juice Açai Avalanche Smoothie?
I was clueless.
Today I finally figured out how to connect my new Garmin watch data to MyFitnessPal. I had some issues with signing into both accounts to get them to speak. And now that I’ve figured it out I can identify if my calorie expenditure is more or less than what I’m burning. Again, something I know very little about.
So I’m actively doing something about my cluelessness, and hopefully heading in an even healthier direction. I have already been on a good path… yet I still have a lot to learn, and I think diet and tracking of my food has been the missing ingredient in my health journey.
I was tempted to start this by sharing a screenshot of my miserable sleep pattern, as recorded by my new watch. However that feels like I’m somehow bragging about how bad it is, and well, that’s not only nothing to brag about, it’s also not necessary. So just know that above everything else, my sleep cycles have been ‘off’ for a couple weeks.
I’m planning on retiring, I’m trying to document the uniqueness of my job(s) for the next principal. I’m dealing with a second family loss in just over 2 years. A close family member had a scary medical issue this summer that is only now coming to a (thankfully positive) end, and a good friend just started chemotherapy.
Cognitive overload is the term that was shared with me by my counsellor. I dismissed it. That’s not my problem, I’m a high functioning individual, I’ll be fine…
What finally gave? My sleep and my health. And now my ego. Admitting that I pushed too hard has been way too hard. I need to be quicker to listen to my counsellor and to my body.
Im happy to offer advice about the importance of taking care of yourself, but the last to take the same advice myself. The easy excuse this time is that I was in cognitive overload, the honest excuse is that I’m stubborn and believe these kinds of things are what others deal with, not me.
I hope sharing this will help someone else listen to their bodies and the people that support them.
I’ll come out of this just fine, the question is, will I learn from this or just let myself get to overload again?
I remember reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and wishing there was an actual Babel fish, a small yellow fish you could put in your ear and instantly translate any language so you heard it in your own. Google Translate is getting pretty close. All you need is a set of headphones and you’ll hear the person speaking to you in another language instantly being translated. It attempts to maintain the speaker’s tone and emphasis, and tries to understand context and even things like idioms, which rarely translate well.
I joke that English is both my first and second language because I struggled so much to be understood when I moved from Barbados to Canada that it felt like I had to relearn to speak English. That said, when I was younger I really wanted to learn another language. Specifically, I wanted to know another language well enough to dream in that language. Now I realize that I’m never going to put the effort in to do this. But at least going forward I can travel abroad with a bit more confidence. Actually it’s not confidence I lacked, it’s comfort. It’s embarrassment that I have gone to another country and have made no effort to understand the people that live there, relying on their knowledge of English.
Of course this won’t help me be understood as much as me understanding others, but I can imagine a time in the not so distant future when this tool will be ubiquitous, and so any time there is a language barrier, both people or groups of people will all be using a translation tool like this.
It’s not perfect, instantaneous translation like the Hitchhiker’s Babel fish, but it’s still a pretty awesome tool that I know is going to come in handy for me.
I sat down to write, put some relaxing music on, and fell asleep before a word was put on the page. I’ve had a lot going on personally and the net effect is that I’m not sleeping well at night. I’m not a great sleeper to begin with and so when I get like this my nights are rough.
Compounding this is the fact that I have a new watch that monitors my sleep. I know this will become a helpful tool eventually, but now it’s more like paralysis by analysis. Seeing my sleep results in the morning only adds to my stress about how crappy my sleep was. Not enough deep sleep, not enough REM, and both too many restless moments as well as too much time awake during the night.
The good news, it’s the weekend and I can take some naps to catch up. I think my body was designed to live in a place with siestas. Power naps revitalize me. I passed out for 20 minutes and feel better. But if I’m honest, I could easily sleep for another 20-30 minutes right now.
I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after I’d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).
So I wasn’t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.
My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didn’t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that I’d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique I’d never tried before.
Here’s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I don’t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that I’m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.
It’s a nice, humbling reminder that it’s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. I’d say, ‘lesson learned’, but I know that’s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. It’s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the idea of getting 1% better. What’s fascinating about this is that the evidence of improvement is not something you see early on.
Going to the gym 6 days a week for 2 weeks will not have your muscles bulging out of your previously loose shirt, but 2 years later you might need a new wardrobe. Reading just 10 minutes a day doesn’t make you an avid reader in 2 weeks, but 2 years later you’ve read a couple dozen books.
The idea of working to be just 1% better is fantastic, and it has some great long term benefits, with no downside. However, there is one thing to consider and that is avoiding pitfalls that set you backwards. The simple example is that you are making great progress in the gym then you push too hard and get an injury. Now it takes months of rehab before you can get back to where you were before the injury. That’s a lot of days not getting 1% better. Sometimes these injuries are from pushing too hard, sometimes it’s from a simple movement that your body wasn’t expecting. These are understandable, and not always avoidable.
On the other hand, sometimes these injuries fall in the ‘you better never’ category, fully avoidable and preventable.
You better never pick up a football and throw it to almost your maximum distance without warming up with a dozen or so short passes first.
You better never challenge someone half your age to a race and go from zero to full speed in 12 seconds.
You better never do that Instagram challenge where you contort your body and try to pick something up off the floor with your teeth.
Essentially, you better never do dumb shit that your body used to do easily when you were half your age, letting your ego get ahead of your current abilities.
On a journey to be ever better, you better never choose to do something where 10 seconds of misguided effort sets you back months of consistent progress.
Laws create outlaws. The moment you’ve banned cell phones in schools is the moment you admit that you’d prefer teachers to police student rather than teach them.
15 years ago I was living in China and tried to share some sites where student reporters were reporting on the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the Great Filter Wall of China blocked the site. I wrote this, and created a little poster to go with it:
Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!
If you are in a school where filters filter learning, here is a little poster for you to hang up in your front entrance:
That was a different time, when people thought they could shield students from social media sites just by filtering them at school. But how far have we really progressed if what we are trying to do now is ban phones? Are we going to ban their smart watches too? Their smart glasses? Are we going to make classrooms electronic free zones? Oh, wait, why don’t we just ban their laptops too?
“Every media outlet and social media feed blames screens for all societal ills.(1) Go ahead, get the screens out of schools just like you did with books, musical instruments, & play. Just keep standardized testing and football! We have entered edtech winter. #discuss (1) real or imagined”
I commented: “Come to Luddite High, where we prepare you for the previous century.”
I find it hard to believe we are here again. Going back to 15 years ago, I wrote, ‘Choose Your Battle‘, where I said,
So which battle will it be? Do we make classrooms a war zone? A battle zone to keep technology out? Or do we make it a learning zone? A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools?
And shared this image:
Sarcasm aside, the point is that filtering and banning are not the solutions we need to be considering. What we need to teach is that there is a time and a place for tools in schools.
More recently I shared:
“With great responsibility comes great power”… that’s the reverse of the Spiderman quote, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and a teacher, John Sarte at Inquiry Hub, uses this to explain to students that while we give them a lot of time to work independently (a lot of responsibility) that comes with a lot of power.“
This applies to technology in the classroom too. We expect students to be responsible with their technology use. We give them the power to choose when it’s appropriate, we put the power in their hands… but when they show they are not responsible, when the abuse the power, we then become more responsible and take away their power.
When a Grade 9 student is working independently and I walk by them scrolling on their phone, I have a conversation with them about how they could be using their time more effectively and and ask them to put their phone away. When a I see a Grade 11 or 12 doing the same thing, I might or might not have the same conversation. If a kid hands everything in on time, shows pride in all their work, contributes well in class and in groups, and is not using their phone during a lesson or presentation… well then so what if when I walk by they happen to be taking a break? But if it’s a student who still hasn’t figured out how to get good work done on time, I’m definitely having the same conversation I had with the Grade 9.
It’s a whole other story when a class is in session. At that point their needs to be a culture and expectation that the phone is either something being used for learning, as permitted by the teacher, or it’s put away. But to ban it… to remove it from schools… to have to police keeping them out of classrooms altogether, is a luddite style draconian policy that sets us back years if not decades. Schools need to be, “A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools.” Not a place where we shelter students from tools they will be using everywhere else in their lives.
I went to a store yesterday after work. It was a cold, rainy evening and already dark at around 5:30pm. I picked up the couple items I came for and headed back to my car. Just as I was getting in, I heard a dog barking at me from inside the car next to me. When I looked over, I saw the dog in the back seat and a note on the electric car’s digital display that read:
My driver will be back soon
Then in smaller font:
Don’t worry! The heater is on and it’s 20°C
With the 20°C in very large font, which could easily be read from a distance.
Considering the taboo normally associated with leaving a pet unattended in a car, I thought this was very clever. Highlighting the temperature of the car removed any concern that the dog’s life is in danger from overheating, and noting the driver will be back shortly eases any anxiety for dog lovers who might worry for the dog’s wellbeing.
This also made me think of kids we see today being babysat by technology. The parent in the grocery store handing over their phone to the kid sitting in the front of the grocery cart. The kid in the back seat of a car watching a movie. The kid at home on the iPad while dinner is being made.
What will this look like when we have robots ‘adding value’ to these experiences? Will dog owners send their pets for walks while they step into a store, with the robot babysitter cleaning up the poop the dog might do on the walk? Will kids be playing in the back yard with their robot babysitter rather than having their eyes glued to a screen?
And is this an improvement to what we have now?
I think for dogs it will be, but I wonder about this for kids? What kinds of bonds will kids build with their robotic babysitters? Will we be able to tell when a teenager has been raised more by robots than by humans? What amount of robot time will be considered too much? Will a parent who lets a robot babysit their kid for hours and hours be judged like a dog owner who left his dog in a hot car?
When we think of robots that we will soon have in our homes, we think of the conveniences they will provide. What happens when one of those conveniences is helping to raise our kids? What impact will it have? There’s a difference between dog sitting and babysitting that makes this question very interesting. And while I find the the digital note in a car telling everyone the dog is comfortable and will be attended to soon quite clever, I’m not sure how clever it will be to have robots attending to our kids more than their parents do.
“The meaning of life is to give life a meaning.” Viktor Frankl
I sometimes think we spend most of our lives like Santiago, the protagonist in Paulo Coelho’s book, The Alchemist… seeking a treasure that was always under his nose.
We seek meaning, we don’t make it.
We strive for more, not realizing how much more we already have, or as Chris Williamson says, “You have already achieved goals that you said would make you happy.”
We desire stuff that distracts us from ourselves. We look outward when we should look inward. We seek accolades instead of seeking happiness or gratitude.
We spend our time chasing opportunities that rob us of time, in an endless loop that makes us live a life of not noticing.
Not noticing the beauty of the world around us. Not noticing the opportunities to connect with people we care about. Not thinking twice about mindlessly scheduling another hour in our calendar for a work meeting, but not blocking off time to call or spend time with a friend.
When I say, ‘We seek meaning, we don’t make it.’ What I really mean is that we play hide and seek with meaning. It’s hidden within us, and yet we spend our time in pursuit of it anywhere and everywhere else… and don’t understand why it’s so elusive?
