Distraction and Focus

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I spent spent 45 minutes on social media. That wasn’t my intent, I have a to-do list that will take me a fair bit of time, and I haven’t don’t my normal daily routines, like writing here, yet. Now that I’m here, I’m focused. I have my headphones on, and my ‘Writing’ playlist playing softly in my ears. I know that I won’t be distracted, and I won’t get up from my laptop until I hit the ‘Publish’ button. I know how to focus, how to stay on a task until it’s done. The issue isn’t the doing, it’s the getting started. Once I’ve started, it will get done (usually) efficiently and (usually) effectively, (I’m far from perfect).

But the world is full of distractions. My phone is probably the biggest one. But so are things like feeding the cat, doing the dishes, television, and tasks that are easier to do than getting started on something bigger. Social media algorithms are designed to keep me engaged, learning from me, and pointing me to things that will keep me scrolling, liking, sharing, and wanting more. I’m not the only one. I love when my wife has to do report cards, suddenly she finds the time to bake, and I get my fill of things like chocolate chip cookies and banana loaf. As a 30 year teacher, I can tell you that she writes amazing report cards that really show that she has put thought into every report… every kid. But before she spends hours on the task, she bakes, cleans, and finds many reasons not get started.

Distractions can be useful, after all the cat does need to be fed and the dishes won’t clean themselves. But distractions can also be a complete waste of time. They can suck time up like a vacuum. A vacuum only sucks what you point it at, and likewise if you point your distractions towards a time-waster, that’s all it takes in. Part of me knows that I work a bit better when I have a deadline, and today I have one with a family commitment in a few hours that will take up the rest of my day. So, after being distracted for 45 minutes, I’m now wondering if I’ll get everything done that I hope to finish. How much less stress would I have placed on myself if I had used that 45 minutes better? Or would I have done the same amount of tasks but simply spread them out to fill the time?

I’ll never get rid of all the distractions I have, but I do think often about how to reduce the ones where I don’t use my time well. I battle with the joy I get from death scrolling on social media, and the thoughts I have about how much better I can use that time. What if I used that time for more writing? What if I spent that time with family and friends? What if I actually started doing archery again? Those are not things I would consider distractions. Those are things I’d like to focus on. Will they give me the same dopamine kick social media gives me? Probably not, but the dopamine spike doesn’t seem like something I should focus on.  That just seems like an empty distraction.

Road Rage

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I’m fortunate to have a 5-7 minute commute to work. When I think of all the people who have to sit in traffic daily for 30, 60, 90 minutes or more I really feel lucky. If the nearest light to my house decides not to cooperate, both ways, my daily commute both to and from work doesn’t add up to 15 minutes.

But then there is one other thing that can add to my commute time… stupid people. The light closest to my house doesn’t have a left turn lane. I hate when people wait until the light turns green to decide to put their indicator on. It irks me, and a profanity or two may or may not exit my mouth. I could have gone around them. I could have made the light.

Yesterday, on my commute home, I was turning left out of my school’s driveway. From the side street opposite our school someone was turning right, going the same direction as me. Although I was first to go, the person pushed out, and I let them go ahead of me. This person then chose not to move into the left turn lane, the direction they were going, and instead stayed in the lane going straight until it was way too late, and then they could not move fully into that lane, blocking me… long enough that I had to miss the green light.

Then at my not-so-favourite intersection, near my house and with no left turn lane, there were two cars turning left, and one more car in front of me. The two cars turning left were held up by oncoming traffic and the car in front of me was in the middle of the road, despite there being room to get around these two cars.

He didn’t have an indicator on so I didn’t know he was actually going right, and could easily have gotten around the left turners. One car got to turn left and we all moved forward. Now the car in front of me put his indicator on and moved over slightly to the right. But he didn’t move fully into the right lane. No, instead he stayed behind the left turning car, with about a foot and a half of the left side of his car behind the car in front… and 6 feet of available space to go around that car on the right. Both cars made it through the yellow light leaving me there wondering if the driver in front of me bribed someone to get his driver’s licence, and maybe saying a profanity or two.

While I would call the actions of these drivers stupid, I guess I’m just as stupid. Because I’m the one sitting in my car, windows rolled up, yelling profanities at people who can’t hear me. I’m angry because my ridiculously short commute had about 4 minutes of wait time added to it. I’m the one getting home angry and ranting to my wife, and later my friends, about this ‘hardship’ I had to go through. The other drivers are going about their day, so I really question who the stupid person is?

Ask any of my friends or family, I’m a patient person. I’m calm, I don’t get overexcited, I can settle into a stressful situation and be the voice of reason. So why do I let road rage get the better of me? What is it that pushes my buttons like this?

I feel like the guy in the elevator after Will Ferrell, in the role of Elf, pushes every button on the elevator and says excitedly that it looks like a Christmas tree, and now the elevator is going to stop on every floor.

I don’t know what kind of days the people I was mad at were having? Maybe the one turning left was following their maps app, and after turning onto the main street, it didn’t tell them in time that the next turn was a left. The guy in front of me, behind the lefter turners and going right, could have been a new driver, a senior, or maybe unfamiliar with the car he was driving.

And maybe the jerk driving my car didn’t need to be such a jerk about waiting an extra couple minutes at each light. 4 minutes of my day shouldn’t have caused my rage. This is a good life lesson, unfortunately I’m not sure I’m ready to learn it.

Saying it again

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Today I was going to write about the benefits of increasing protein in my diet, especially as I age. I came up with the title, ‘The Power of Protein’, but that sounded familiar so I searched my blog and found a post by that name, on this topic, written this past January. Then I thought about writing about ‘rinsing and repeating’ old ideas, but that seemed familiar. A quick search of my blog led me to ‘Rinse and repeat’, but I wrote that over 4 and a half years ago, in February 2020.

I ended that post saying,

“I’m sure this will happen again. I will have moments when my creative juices are flowing and I’ll share fresh ideas… or at least fresh ideas to me. And I’ll have moments when I end up recycling or repeating older ideas. The process of writing every day will lead to some repetition, hopefully though, the ideas I choose to repeat are worth reading and thinking about again. I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself, but if you catch me doing this, please feel free to let me know.”

But I think enough time has gone by to be able to bring this topic up again. The reason is a bit of a realization (in two parts). First, I think some ideas are worth emphasizing. Saying or thinking something once doesn’t always sink in. Sometimes I need reinforcements, and the writing process reinforces my thinking. For example, while I eat more protein than I did a year ago, I still don’t eat as much as recommended by people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick or Dr. Peter Attia. So writing about this again makes me think about increasing my intake.

Secondly, I’m not some guru that knows a lot about everything. I have passions and interests and that’s what I enjoy writing about. So when I’m writing about some topic yet again, I’m ok with that… Because I’d rather write about something I’m passionate and interested in, rather than forcing myself to write about a topic I’m less interested in, just to add more variety to my writing.

It’s more of a ‘rinse and re-emphasize’ rather than repeat. So, despite previous saying, “I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself.” I just did it anyway. And I’m doing it to emphasize a different point: I will repeat myself! But when I do, I’ll do my best to emphasize some aspect a little differently. I’ll attempt to enlighten rather than digress… to rinse out new ideas, rather than just repeat them.

Meetings and spaces in between

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Have you ever gone to a meeting and wondered, “Why am I here?” Or questioned why the meeting wasn’t just a memo or an email? Are there ever times when your schedule can be filled with meetings such that there is almost no time to get anything done? Then one day you look at your schedule and you notice an entire day with no meetings.

If that happens to me, the first thing I think is, “I’m going to get so much done!” And that ends up being half true. Why only half true? Because the void in the calendar gets filled. Interruptions, distractions, and work getting done but stretching to fill the space faster than you imagined.

There is a sweet spot where the spaces between meetings is ideal. If the gap is too small, it’s hard to get anything meaningful done. If the gap is too big, it needs to be filled with intention… there needs to be a goal that is calendared in the space. Or the space gets inefficiently filled. That’s not to say I’m wasting time, but I’m not getting bigger, more ideal, tasks done unless they are planned.

It’s easy to fill time doing stuff that needs to get done, but not necessarily doing the things that really move me or my team forward. It’s easy to fill the in between spaces with tasks, not goals, with busywork not work that I want to do.

The things I must do crowd out the things I want and hope to do. My calendar fills, the spaces in between get filled. I stay on top of what needs to be done but struggle to get the things I hope to do done. Those items often get rushed or not done at all. Unless I fill the spaces in between with intention, they get filled with tasks. necessary tasks, but not the only tasks I want my day filled with. The key is to fill my calendar with intentions, not just meetings.

Consistency is built on the hard days

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I barely slept last night. This doesn’t happen often, but if you search my blog for the word insomnia, you’ll see that periodically I struggle with sleep. This time I question if it wasn’t at least partially initiated by my own perseverating thoughts after I had a rougher than usual nights sleep two nights ago. I felt like this was coming on, and couldn’t shake the thought. Did I unintentionally will a night of almost no sleep into existence or was I just feeling it build in my body? I don’t know.

In my years as an educator, most of my absences have been related to back pain, but this morning after staring at the ceiling as the room brightened, I decided that with the lack of sleep the night before compounding a sleepless night, I would would take the day off. Today I had two long naps. The first one was broken, fighting my monkey-mind and restless body, and the second one longer and much more like real sleep. Tonight I’ll catch up on work, and then intentionally go to sleep a little later than usual… hopefully feeling tired and sleeping through the night.

That’s a long introduction to make a simple point. It would have been easy to skip my workout today. But I didn’t. In fact, I think I would attribute my longer, better nap to getting the feelings of restlessness out of my body. I spent 30 minutes with a weighted vest, on an incline, on my treadmill. It was hard enough that I went slower than I normally do and on less of an incline. I didn’t enjoy it, but I did it. I also did a humorous attempt at a meditation where my internal dialogue was so loud, and so lacking in concentration that squirrel brain would be a complimentary description. But I did it. Now I’m spending too much time rewriting my words here, making me realize I should make dinner before attempting to tackle anything related to work… but I’m writing, and I will do some work catch-up before tomorrow.

All this to say that doing my usual routines today has been challenging. And not very rewarding. But there is one key reward that I’m getting out of this and that’s consistency. I’m continuing my habits despite it not being easy to do today. My body and my brain are not allowing me to be at my best, but I’m not allowing me to use that as an excuse. Actually, two good things happened today. First of all, I did get a few hours of solid sleep that have me on a recovery path after a sleepless night last night. Secondly, I maintained my habits. Because the hardest days are the days that really matter. I didn’t need a break from my habits today, I needed to do them despite how hard they were to do. That’s what make them habits and not just things I like to do.

The best questions

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There is a cliche saying that, ‘There is no such thing as a dumb question.” Tell that to a teacher who has just started an engaging discussion in a class and a kid undermines the flow of the conversation with a dumb, often unrelated question. The reality is that questions have innate and even measurable value and there is depth and quality to good question asking.

Think about how important good questioning is in the new world of AI. We need not look far on social media these days to find a post about how to generate intelligent prompts… intelligent questions, well posed, and designed to give you back optimum responses. Design the right question and you increase the chances of an ideal answer.

What’s the best way to promote good questioning in schools? How do we teach ‘Asking good questions?’

At Inquiry Hub we have students design their own inquiries. They take a course developed around the students figuring out what their inquiry question is, then answering it. And they don’t do this once, they do this several times over the year for their first two years, then in Grade 11 they design a full year course.

All the while, students are asking questions, then seeking answers. It’s the practice of asking the questions and not just seeking the answers that makes this process special. They aren’t just asking questions Google or AI can produce answers to. They are not answering a question the teacher asked. They are forming the questions and thus the direction of the learning.

You don’t start asking better and better questions just by answering other people’s questions. You don’t ask better and better questions without practicing forming the questions yourself. Students need to be designing the questions. Because if they are only in charge of answering them, there will be tools and upcoming technologies that will find the same or better answers, faster. The future innovators of the world will be better at writing the best questions, not just answering them.

How good, how soon?

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I am still a little freaked out by how good the Google NotebookLM’s AI ‘Deep dive conversations’ are. The conversations are so convincing. The little touches it adds, like extended pauses after words like ‘and’ are an excellent example of this.

In the one created for my blog, the male voice asked, “It actually reminds me, you ever read Atomic Habits by James Clear?” And the female voice’s response is, “I haven’t. No.”

Think about what’s happening here in order to continue the conversation in a genuine way. The male voice can now make a point and provide the female voice ‘new’, previously unknown information. But this whole conversation is actually developed by a single AI.

How soon before you have an entire conversation with a customer service representative oblivious to the fact that you are actually talking to an AI? Watch a newscast or a movie unaware that the people you are watching are not really people?

I shared close to 2,000 blog posts I’ve written into the notebook, if I shared my podcasts too and it replicated my voice, I wonder how long it will be before a digital me could be set to write my posts then simultaneously do live readings of them on my blog? Writing and sounding just like me… without me having to do it!

As a scary extension of this, could I learn something from the new content that it produces? Could I gain insights from the digital me that I would struggle to come up with myself?

This is just the beginning. How much of the internet is going to end up being AI generated and filled with AI reactions and responses to other AI’s? And how much longer after that before we notice?

Playing with Google NotebookLM

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Today I added all the posts on my Daily-Ink blog, from the time I started blogging daily in July 2019 up to yesterday, into Google NotebookLM. The first thing I did was to ask it ‘What does David Truss write about on his Daily-Ink Blog?’ I’ll share the response below, but what I really wanted to do was to create an Audio Overview, a ‘Deep dive conversation’ that is basically two AI ‘personalities’ discussing the content I shared.

I didn’t know what to expect, and this is the Deep Dive Conversation into Daily-Ink that was generated.

I am blown away by both the conversational aspect of this AI dialogue as well as the way it stuck to a single theme of habits while covering a fair bit of the things I wrote about.

I’m going to be playing with this tool a lot more in the future… and this is just the beginning of the use of AI to summarize and help us learn from large amounts of information. Think of the possibilities to come!

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As I mentioned above, the first question I asked on Google NotebookLM was, ‘What does David Truss write about on his Daily-Ink Blog?’ and this was the response:

David Truss writes about a variety of topics in his blog Daily-Ink, but common themes include:
● Education: This is a frequent topic for Truss, who is an educator. He has blogged about topics like inquiry-based learning and teaching, blended learning and distributed learning, leadership and innovation in education, and student voice and choice. For instance, in one post, he discusses his visit to Inquiry Hub Secondary, a school where “students design the school” themselves.
● Technology: Truss often discusses technology in his blog posts. Specific topics of interest include blended learning, distributed learning, and artificial intelligence. He also used his blog to document his experiences using new technologies. For example, he has written about Dall-E, an AI image generation software and Bing Copilot, an AI assistant.
● Personal Reflections: Beyond his professional interests, Truss also writes about his personal life, sharing reflections on topics such as relationships, personal growth, mindfulness, and daily routines. For example, he writes about the challenges of maintaining routines during the pandemic and reflects on the value of taking walks. He also frequently documents his journey with archery and maintaining an active lifestyle.
● The Blogging Process: Truss seems to view blogging as a personal practice and frequently shares his thoughts on the writing process itself. He sees writing as an art form and his blog as his canvas. He discusses his commitment to writing daily, the challenges he faces, and the satisfaction he derives from it.
In addition to these recurring themes, Truss also uses his blog to:
● Share Links and Resources: Truss frequently shares links to articles, videos, and other resources that he finds interesting or valuable. He often provides context for these links, explaining why he finds them noteworthy and encouraging his readers to explore them further.
● Engage in Conversations: Truss uses his blog as a platform for engaging in conversations with his readers. He actively responds to comments, asking for feedback and acknowledging different perspectives.
Overall, David Truss uses his Daily-Ink blog as a space for reflecting on his experiences, exploring his interests, and connecting with others. He is open about his process, his struggles, and his growth, offering a glimpse into his life and his thoughts.

 

 

Coaching matters

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I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been struggling to push myself in workouts. Today I went to my friend’s gym with him and I did his routine. First of all, having a workout buddy is a great motivator. But also, we did exercises I haven’t done before and he coached me through them. He even coached me on bench press, which I’ve done quite a bit of before.

I can’t stress how valuable it is to get good coaching. Subtle changes in body position can make a huge difference in working the right muscles, and performing in a way that’s more efficient, effective, and safe. And when you are trying to work a muscle and you actually isolate it such that you aren’t cheating using other nearby muscles, you are bound to see better gains than doing the same reps and weight but with poor technique.

Good coaching really matters and today I got to push myself harder than I have in a while. So much so, I think I need a nap to recover.

Mental motivation around maintenance

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Good day or bad day, I work out an average 6 days a week. One day is usually just the 5km loop up the Coquitlam Crunch with a buddy, and the other 5 (or 6) days usually involve weights. I start with 20-30 minutes cardio, 1 day a week doing the Norwegian Protocol. Then I stretch for a few minutes, then I try to work one muscle group to fatigue.

That might look like 3 minutes of leg raises and crunches. A double set of fly and bench press. A tricep or bicep set, pull-ups, or weighted step-ups. But only one of these. So my full workout from cardio to stretching to weights usually takes about 50 minutes if I do 30 of cardio.

It’s not a hard routine, and while I’m working one set of muscles to fatigue, I don’t usually feel all that sore afterwards and it’s easy to work a different set of muscles the next day.

All this to say that I have a good routine, that I mostly enjoy (other than the Norwegian Protocol which kinda sucks every time). I get up, write, meditate, and start my workout. If I write for too long, I listen to a guided meditation while doing my cardio. I almost never miss a work day workout, my gaps tend to be on weekends or holidays.

So the habit is engrained, and I don’t need motivation to do my routine. I wake up and just start my routine, and don’t stop until it’s done. Easy.

What I do struggle with sometimes is how hard I push myself. For the last few days my ‘work one muscle group to fatigue’ sets have not been a push to fatigue. Mentally, I just can’t get myself to that place. Every set I do, I quit when my muscles should be pushed further.

For example, yesterday I was doing bicep curls with a slightly lighter weight than I usually use, and yet I wasn’t able to get many reps in. I would think, ‘I’ve got at least two more reps in me’, I’d do one and just decide that I would stop. Physically I could have done more. And even if I couldn’t, the half rep more trying would have meant that I took the muscle to fatigue. But I quit. I didn’t truly complete the set. I couldn’t mentally get myself to push hard enough.

And of course I beat myself up about it. Especially since I’ve felt like this for a few days. The reality is that it’s damn hard to push to fatigue every day. Especially when I’m not doing this to be a bodybuilder. I’m not on a mission to bulk up. I don’t have a race or a sport I’m training for. I’m just trying to be a bit fitter than I was yesterday.

So I’m at a point now where I’m in maintenance mode. I’m not taking a break, I’m not slacking in my routine, but I’m cruising a bit on my overall effort. And yet, despite recognizing all this, I’m still hard on myself when I can’t push to 100% for just a few minutes in the day.

I believe it would be healthier for me to think of this as a regular cycle of maintenance rather than a failure to push myself. I understand this intellectually. Yet I struggle. I feel like I’m letting myself down. I feel like I’m getting old and forgetting how to push as hard as I could before.

It’s an internal battle that I think I should have figured out by now. Sharing it ‘out loud’ feels a little embarrassing, because it feels like I’m seeking empathy or condolences or a pep talk, but I don’t want or need that. What I need is to be easier on myself as I cycle through this, knowing that the ability to push myself hard will come back.

The challenge is that I fear being easy on myself. I fear that this easing up can become more frequent… That maintainance mode can easily become my default mode. And deep down I want to keep this fear. Because that fear will reduce the amount of time that I spend in maintenance mode, and the fear reminds me that I know how to push myself. I’d rather be upset at myself and strive for improvement, than be more self-forgiving and also more likely to accept mediocrity and maintenance as my default.

It’s time to put on my weighted vest and get on my treadmill, and listen to a guided meditation. I have a routine I have to keep.