Approaching 200

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We didn’t know on a cold, wet, and dark Friday in January of 2021 that we would make this a usual thing. Two friends, feeling isolated with covid restrictions decided to do the Coquitlam Crunch so that we could meet outdoors when indoor meetings were restricted to your family circle. Now, over 4 and a half years later, we’ve completed our 190th Crunch together, averaging more than 40 a year.

We were about 50 in when we decided that 200 would be a great goal to achieve before we retired, and now that is all but guaranteed. Did we fathom this when we had done just one Crunch? No. We didn’t even know if we’d go again. But sure enough we kept going, with a goal of 40 a year to match the amount of school weeks in the year.

Now, I can’t think of anything I’ve been more dedicated to (besides my wife of course). We do everything we can to not to miss a week. We usually go out on Saturdays, but we’ll squeeze in a Thursday after school if one of us is away on the weekend.

Imagine being just over a year into a routine and deciding on a 5-year goal… then sticking to it. Sounds challenging, but it’s something I look forward to every week. I’d never have spent so much time with my buddy, Dave, if we hadn’t made this a goal, and an expectation. And there are more goals to come… stay tuned.

Canadian measurements

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I saw this very funny post on social media:

Americans: I use miles and pounds

Europeans: I use kilometres and kilograms

Canadians: [snorting a line of assorted measuring systems] I’m 5’8, I weigh 150lbs, horses weigh 1000kgs, my house is an hour away and I drive 80 km/h to get there, I need a cup of flour and 1L of milk.

What amazes me is that despite living in 2 worlds, with a mix of pounds and kilograms, miles and kilometres, Fahrenheit and Celsius, I am absolutely useless at converting between these measurements. It’s 20° outside, I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit. I heat my wife’s latte milk to 170°, I have no idea what that is in Celsius. My wife’s weight scale is in kilograms and no matter how many time I weigh myself on it, I need Siri to convert it to pounds for me.

You’d think that I’d learn, but no, I just blindly choose the system of measurement that I’m used to and am completely oblivious to the conversion to any other system.

Am I the only one?

We are the consumed, not not the customer

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There is so much BS on the internet these days. There are posts that either exaggerate or confabulate research data to sell ideas and products that don’t do anything they promise to do. I look up topics like reducing snoring or tinnitus and then for the next month I’m bombarded with ads for ‘cures’ of these annoyances. I’ll get detailed, directly-marketed-to-me advertisements including things like, “We are looking for males over the age of 55 in Coquitlam” to participate in a tinnitus study”.

I won’t just get pop up windows, and still ads, I’ll get videos embedded in my stream. I’ll get long format ads where it takes 5+ minutes to get to the point, because advertisers know that if they can keep people watching long enough they will feel invested in getting answers.

And here’s the thing, my ad algorithm will be completely different to yours. It’s targeted to our individual interests, our searches, our likes, shares, clicks, and even the things we say. We are not the customer we are consumed based on our interactions. We are data points that provide identifying features to be exploited. Targeted not for our benefit but to the benefit of companies that pay to learn that our data points are relevant to their products.

Click on an ad, even accidentally, and you can expect similar products to be fed to you many more times. Is this to serve you what you need or to serve advertisers what they need? The answer is clear. It’s not about us. We are data points consumed by an advertising machine. We are the target, the product, and not the actual consumer. On the internet of things, on social media platforms, we are just nodes of data sold to advertisers, we are products… And advertisers are the ultimate consumers of the data points (our data points) that they pay for.

Visually acclimatized

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I’m sitting in my basement and on the floor in front of me is a framed painting that should be on the wall. It’s one of a pair that used to side-by-side, but they need a couple Velcro strips to get them aligned. Unfortunately the strip unstuck from the one that’s currently on the floor, and I removed it because it looked way too crooked on the wall.

It’s an easy fix, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s interesting that although I’m downstairs a lot, before looking at the painting on the floor just now, I’ve barely noticed the fact that it’s on the floor and missing from next to the matching frame on the wall.

How many things are like that for us? Items sitting inconspicuously in the absolutely wrong spot but we are visually acclimatized to where they sit? We go about our day ignoring the fact that items have a new home in a location they shouldn’t have?

I wonder if that’s the same for our brains and the way we think about things?

Unspoken expectations

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“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”  ~Chris Williamson

We spend so much time living in the past. We beat ourselves up for what we did do, didn’t do, should have done. We build scenarios that never happened yet are fully imagined. And we play these scenarios in our mind as if they are real. Then we are helpless not to respond through thoughts and perseverations, again as if the scenarios were real.

Unspoken expectations build resentment, steal joy, and limit our presence in the present… Not because we are living in the past, but because we are living in the imagined outcomes of possibilities which never existed.

The past, real or imagined, limits our ability to truly be present now, unless we let go and focus on our presence in the present. Unless we leave our unspoken expectations behind.

Daily Sunshine

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I have always loved sitting out in the early morning sun. I feel energized, like I’m recharging my batteries. No sun tan lotion, just the heat of the low sun, not yet too hot. Recently I’ve been listening to a 10 minute meditation as I soak in the rays.

Now I’m seeing more and more information coming out about how important sunshine is to our health. For me it was intuitive, I feel better when I get my dose. However a sample size of one anecdotal story isn’t evidence. But more and more research is coming out to suggest sunshine affects us far more than we thought, and while it’s unhealthy to sunburn, it’s also unhealthy to hide from the sun.

Spend some time each day in the sun… it’s good for.

Feeling underutilized

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This morning I saw a news item on LinkedIn News, “Are workers being underestimated?”

“The majority of U.S. professionals (58%) believe they have a wide range of skills that are being underutilized in their current roles, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence survey.

This sense of untapped potential is especially strong in certain fields: Nearly two-thirds of workers in the administrative and support services industry (65%) say they’re being underutilized, along by 63% of those in retail and 62% of those in transportation. Education and oil, gas and mining follow, both at 60%.”

To me this isn’t an employee but rather an employer issue. It’s not a worker issue to resolve but rather a leadership issue. I think in many cases the enthusiasm of a worker to be innovative and try new things, which magnify strengths and utilizes untapped skills, are quelled by a drive for consistency and minimum competence. Instead of promoting opportunities for innovation, large companies want to minimize uniqueness for the safety of not taking risks and making mistakes.

‘If I let this employee try this unique approach, other employees will try less effective approaches’. Or, ‘I can approve this additional cost request for one employee, but if others ask it will be unsustainable, so it’s better not to try and end up with cost overruns’. Or, ‘If it fails it will make us look bad’… Or, or, or… it’s always easier to turn down differentiation than to allow unknowns that are not a guaranteed success.

So, innovation is deemed too costly, or too much of a risk, and employees feel like the potential they have is underutilized.

We need to create an environment where ‘Yes is the default‘. Where innovation and failing forward is seen as opportunities to grow… and where those we work with feel like they are being better utilized.

Planning an adventure

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A friend was talking about an upcoming trip and the enthusiasm and excitement he shared was contagious. It got me thinking about how differently I think of trip planning. For him it is literally part of the adventure. For me, it often feels like work.

This was insightful. I’ve got it all backwards. For me the excitement comes when I arrive at the destination. For him the adventure begins long before that. I’m missing out, a simple shift in perspective would give me far more joy. The journey begins with planning.

A year and a half later

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I’ve had some time recently that I could have used better. It reminded me of something I shared a year-and-a-half ago, ‘If I had the time’.

I won’t reshare the whole post, but I’ll share the very powerful comic and quote I shared:

Here’s a great comic by @MrLovenstein:

And the quote by Author Julia Cameron:

“The “if I had time” lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born — without the luxury of time.”

And I ended the post with this,

“If only I had the time… would I use it? Would you? How convenient and comfortable is this lie? The reality is that if it’s important enough, there’s probably time for it, time we can find, time we can make, rather than making up excuses.”

—

Discipline is hard. Good habits are hard. Being strong in one area of your life doesn’t automatically make you strong in another. People who smoke know it’s bad for them. People cheating on their diet still want to lose weight. Yet, in both these cases the people in question could be very competent and effective in other areas of their lives.

It’s a reality that in some areas of our lives, even when we have the time, it can still be really hard to do things we actually want to do.

Remembering the Push

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I’m 57. I’m never going to compete athletically at the level I did half a lifetime ago. I know this. I understand this. I’m good in terms of how I think about this.

And so what I look for now are moments where I connect with that former athlete, the drive, the push, that I once had in sports. The ability to have my body quit before my mind does. That’s the push.

We are capable of so much more than our minds usually allow. We exert ourselves with mental limits conservatively below what our bodies can achieve. So when we have those moments where we surrender those limits and work our bodies to limits that are our real limits… we remember the push of who we once were… and we become that again.