Author Archives: David Truss

Not just lifespan, healthspan

Dr. Peter Attia is an expert in longevity and he talks about healthspan rather than just lifespan. Last summer I played water polo with a 73 year old, and I’ve met people a decade younger than him that struggle walking up a flight of stairs. It’s one thing to get old and yet another to live healthy for longer.

Have a listen to this podcast with Dr. Attia. If you aren’t interested in listening, here are two things to do for the rest of your life*:

1. Do cardio at least 3 times a week and one of those times get your heart rate up above 80% of your max for your age/health.

2. Do weight training 2-3 times a week and try to work at least one muscle to fatigue (hypertrophy).

Remind your body that you are young and you won’t just increase your lifespan, you’ll increase your healthspan.

——-

*I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the internet. If you aren’t already healthy, please don’t start an exercise program without consulting health experts.

Backwards momentum

Here is a news article shared with me today, “Quebec to ban cellphones in elementary and high school classrooms“.

I created this graphic and wrote about it in March of 2009, “Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity?“:

Here is another image I created in March of 2010, “Warning! We Filter Websites at School”

Related to artificial intelligence (AI), I’ve written “Use it or fall behind“, “You can’t police it“, and “Fear of Disruptive Technology“. The third link also shared the images above.

How are we talking about, actually no, how are we implementing technology bans in public schools in 2023? In Canada? It would be comical if it wasn’t sad.

This is going to be a farce trying to police. Good luck getting students to take off their Apple Watches. Have fun trying to stop the texts and chats from moving onto their laptops. Enjoy confiscating student’s second phones, after they handed you their old phone first. Don’t think that will be a problem? You’ll also need to confiscate glasses too.

It’s time to realize that it’s better to manage rather than police these tools. Banning won’t work. That’s so 2009. It’s time to realize that while “It’s going to get messy“, “The challenge ahead is creating learning opportunities where it is obvious when the tool is and isn’t used. It’s having the tool in your tool box, but not using it for every job… and getting students to do the same.”

Manage the disruption, don’t ban it. Be educators, not law enforcers.

Staying in the discomfort

A couple days ago at our start of the year administrators meeting, we had a presentation by Jo Chrona. She was presenting on learning in Indigenous and anti-racist education, and she said something that still sits with me. She talked about how the learning isn’t easy but the real challenge is sitting, and staying, in the discomfort.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. We spend our days as problem solvers. We see the challenges and the issues we face and we tackle them. But systemic problems are not something with a quick fix, and if we have a ‘fix and move on’ mentality, we aren’t really dealing with the underlying issues. If we move away from uncomfortable issues they don’t really get meaningfully addressed. If we don’t sit in the discomfort, we don’t learn or help our community learn.

But it’s not human nature to stay in an uncomfortable place. This needs to be intentional. Being vulnerable and having the hard conversations, rather than trying to immediately make things better, is when we can really reflect, listen, learn, and heal. And of these four things, listening is the most important. If we are fixing, we aren’t listening.

One of the powerful things about staying and sitting in the discomfort is that we only really learn things well when there is a struggle. And so when we allow ourselves time to struggle, to understand the struggle of others, we create the space for deep learning to happen. We create the opportunity for meaningful learning and meaningful change to happen.

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.

Trips to the moon

India just soft landed a spacecraft on the moon. It’s the first craft to successfully land in the South Pole region, where craters that never see sunlight might be hiding frozen water. Reading this article made me realize that, while landing a human on the moon hasn’t been done in decades, the ‘race to the moon’ has been alive and well since then.

I searched for ‘missions to the moon’ and found this massive list on Wikipedia. It was shocking to see how many there have been, and how many of those have been failures. I’m not sure what rock I’ve been living under but I had no idea that so many countries were part of this space race.

I hope this craft finds frozen water. It would be an amazing discovery. And with a human return to the moon planned by NASA in the next few years, I’ll be watching news about moon landings a lot more now. We certainly are living in fascinating times and I’m excited to learn more about our universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere from flights like this and from telescopes like the James Webb telescope. There is still so much we have to learn.

Back to the routine

After 6 weeks holidays, I’m back to work today. While work creeped into these holidays a fair bit, it was the most ‘off’ I’ve been in years… and quite frankly I needed it. I spent over a month of this break away from home, and it’s nice to be back in my own bed.

I feel refreshed and ready for the new school year. The long hours don’t start until September, and so I can get acclimatized over the next couple weeks. This starts today with my writing, meditation, exercise, and stretching first thing in the morning.

I’m someone who both dislikes and requires good routines. I dislike them because they make the days seem a bit robotic, like I’m just going through the motions. I require (and even like) them because I can get a lot done and feel accomplished.

This holiday started really strong with maintaining my routines but my Toronto trip home was quite disruptive. I was stuck on Vancouver time, staying up until well after midnight in Toronto, but still waking up early. I moved a lot of boxes, but didn’t do any cardio, and I don’t think I meditated more than once in 11 days. I accomplished a lot helping my mom, but really broke my routine and ate too much.

But then again, I was on holidays, and had a wonderful time. I got to spend a lot of time with my wife, and a bit of time with my kids too. I think as school starts, I need to build time in with them as part of my routine as well. It’s easy to put in long hours and not make time for family… not on purpose, just by nature of the job.

Routines can help to regulate things that can normally be neglected. My morning routine lets me feel like I’ve accomplished something for myself before I start my job in the service of others. I think the next step is to routinize some quality time with family, or before I know it the school year is over and work was the only priority after my morning routine.

Digital vomit

In his recent ‘Making Sense’ podcast, Sam Harris said this:

“Every part of culture: Science, public health, war, economics, the lives of famous people, conspiracy theories about everything and nothing… All information is in the process of being macerated by billions of tiny mouths and then spit back again, and lapped up by others. So what is in fact actually digital vomit, at this point, is being spread everywhere. And celebrated as some form of nutrition.”

Unfortunately this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. It’s not just ‘billions of tiny mouths’ that are going to be spewing digital vomit, it’s going to be a massive machine of propaganda networks spewing AI created disinformation, vitriol, fake news, and falsified ‘evidence’ to back up the vomit it produces.

And while you would hope mainstream media would be the balancing force to combat this digital vomit, this is not the case. Mainstream media does not have a foothold in truth-telling. Don’t believe me? Watch MSNBC and Fox News side-by-side and you’ll see completely different coverage of the same event. You’ll see minor threats described as crises. If it’s not an emergency it’s not news… so it’s an emergency.

So prepare for a lot more digital vomit. Start trying to figure out how to mop up the mess, to make sense of the mess, because it’s going to get very messy!

So, so delicious

I’m very adventurous with food. I love trying new items on a menu, and I enjoy street food as much as fine dining. But sometimes I find a meal at a restaurant and I fall in love. When that happens the rest of the menu disappears. My philosophy is, if you find something absolutely delicious then why try something else and be disappointed?

Maybe, just maybe, there ever so rarely might be something better on the menu, but if I really love something, I don’t care. 99/100 times I’d be disappointed and I’d rather just not try for that 1%. No, I’ll stick to the item I love.

The prawn tacos at Cafe Mexico in Victoria BC are one of those favourite meals.

So, so delicious.

Tonight my daughter said, “If I was on death row, I think I’d choose this for my last meal.”

The $16 Paloma is worth it as well. And my daughter recommends the margaritas.

The next time I come to Victoria I’m certain of two things: I’m going to go to Cafe Mexico and I’m going to have the prawn tacos!

Moments of silence

There was a time when moments of silence were golden. When being alone with my thoughts was quiet and contemplative. When no sound meant calm and inspired serenity.

Now I fill those moments. I listen to books, podcasts, and music. I avoid the silence because that’s when my tinnitus gets loud… and even if I wanted that silence, I wouldn’t get it. My tinnitus is a constant tone, for others it’s like crickets. For anyone who has it, it’s the end of silence.

But there is another kind of silence. It’s the quiet of the mind. It’s like an ocean without waves. This is even more elusive. It is the moments when our minds are not reliving the past or creating unlikely futures. It is when our minds are not thinking about our schedule, worrying about our responsibilities, or planning our next moment, meeting, or meal.

It is when there is nothing to do, but there is no boredom.

It is when nothing is pressing, and there is no need to rush.

It’s also when you don’t seek a distraction. But now the distraction is always there. It looks like Facebook or TikTok, Instagram or Twitter, YouTube or Audible, text or email, WhatsApp or Snapchat.

We have let technology steal away our moments of silence. We are robbed of those golden moments. The dopamine rush of the next notification is too great to resist, and too daunting to allow silence a chance. Silence is no longer a desired state, it is a state of absence to avoid, not a desired state of stillness.

Moments of silence were already elusive, now they are all but nonexistent. I even wonder if for someone younger, who spent their teen years with a smartphone, if silence was ever known, is ever desirable? Or is this just a nostalgic ideal?

It’s quiet now, but my tinnitus sings it’s ever present song, and I put on some background music. The silence is gone.

Blast from the past

Yesterday I went to a friends house. I knew he was trying to gather some old friends I haven’t seen in a while, but did not expect to see so many, including 6 people I haven’t seen in over 25 years. To put this in a bit more perspective, of these six, the oldest is 49, so I hadn’t seen them in more than half their lifetimes.

They were all from my water polo coaching career, and I knew them all as high school students, when I worked at a highschool as lifeguard as well as swim and water polo coach, and also coached a club team that many of them played on. Reminiscing was so much fun! It was shocking to me how young some of these (almost 50 year old) ‘kids’ looked. It was a delight to hear about their families, and lives since I knew them.

I find it wonderfully heartwarming that I can meet someone I haven’t seen in so long and yet it’s almost like no time has passed since we last met. Sports does that, they build a comradery among players and coaches that can last a lifetime.

Those 6 were not the only people gathered. There were several others who were there whom I haven’t seen since before covid, and so while the gap wasn’t that long, it was still amazing to spend time with them.

I marvel that so much time has passed since my coaching days… since I trained and coached with these dedicated, young athletes. They were my extended family. They still feel that way. That so much time can pass and yet I feel so connected, is very special.

This gathering is something I’ll remember for a very long time… and hopefully it won’t be another 25 years before I see them all again.