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.

Massage Day

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I’ve been seeing the same massage therapist for over 25 years. It’s amazing to have someone who totally understands just what my body needs for pain relief. Days like today, I had a couple sore spots I had her focus on, but most days she just digs right in with her elbows and works her magic, exactly where I need it.

For some people massages are enjoyed for relaxation. For me they it’s all about the therapy. My first decade going to her was agony, followed by incredible relief for my back pain. My back pain is much more manageable now, and I know that regular massage has been an essential part of my improvements.

About 5 years in she admitted that she used to hate when I came in because it was so demanding, how deep she had to go. “You were by far one of my three toughest clients and the other two were in severe car accidents,” she told me.

Now she occasionally shares me as an example. If someone is getting a hard massage and asks if she goes harder on someone, she says, ‘I have this one guy that will fall asleep when I’m going harder than this!’ And I do (usually) fall asleep. She knows she’s going deep enough because despite being asleep, I have to change my breathing to withstand the pressure.

Asleep or not, massage day is heaven for me. I come out with zero back pack and it lasts for a few hours. A few moments in my life where I’m not aware of my back, it doesn’t require my attention. Massage days are wonderful!

Leg day

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Unlike many memes regarding physical fitness and bodybuilding, I don’t usually skip leg day. In fact, most days I start my workout walking on my treadmill at a fast pace, on an incline, in a 40lb weighted vest, for 20 or more minutes. So, I do work my legs… but they are still chicken legs that make me look like I skip leg day.

I have seen some gains in the past year, but these gains have come at a cost. The cost is that when I work my legs with weights, they always hurt 2 and 3 days later. I worked my legs pretty hard yesterday and my quads and glutes are aching today. I know I’m going to wake up feeling them again tomorrow.

It’s weird, since I started taking creatine a few years ago, that two-day later ache has been drastically reduced. My buddy and I did back and chest workout today that would normally have me aching for days with after workout soreness, yet I can tell it won’t be that bad. Thank you creatine. However, creatine or not, when I work my legs they ache for longer than I find comfortable.

And the reality is that while I work my legs, I don’t work them as hard as I did yesterday all that often. Why? Because it’s not fun feeling like I need to hold the railing going up and down the stairs because my legs feel like jelly. So while I don’t skip leg day, I do skip hard leg days, and really don’t push them as hard as other parts of my body.

Until I join a gym and start using equipment designed specifically for legs, I don’t think I’m going to see too much in the way of gains… I’m just not willing to do the real work it would take. That said, I’m still never going to skip leg day.

Promptism – A flat earth metaphor

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I read an interesting article by Sune Selsbæk-Reitz, on a word he sort of invented for asking and believing what AI shares, Promptism. The article, The Earth Is Flat, defines this new word: “Promptism is the quiet belief that if I just ask my question clearly enough, I’ll get something true in return. Maybe even something wise.”

And the article describes how promptism is killing curiosity, and providing ‘truths’ that may not be truthful, and yet are being taken as so at face value without questioning.

From the article:

“The ritual is the same every time:

Ask the machine. Get the word.

Move on.

We don’t think of it as belief, because there’s no incense, no robes, no temple. But there’s authority. And there’s trust. And there’s something deeply seductive about being given something that feels final. Even when it isn’t. Even when the certainty is a performance.

Because the thing is: the more fluent the answer, the more invisible the framing becomes. And if we don’t pause to notice that… we’ll mistake fluency for truth, and coherence for proof.”

The article continues:

“But with ChatGPT or Gemini, the answer arrives fully dressed.

Paragraphs. Polished tone. No seams. No links. Just a voice that sounds sure of itself.

That’s not just convenience. It’s a design choice. And it’s flattening how we think. Because friction – the pause, the doubt, the need to look something up – isn’t a flaw in the process of knowing. It is the process. That little jolt of uncertainty that sends you looking deeper?

That’s what makes knowledge stick.

That’s how you learn.”

…“And the more we do this, the more we forget that knowledge was never meant to arrive fully formed.”

I’ve noticed how this has affected me. I don’t go two or three pages into Google anymore. I don’t find tangent, related, and interesting ideas and connections. I ask an LLM, I get an answer, or I refine my question and ask again. I seek an immediate answer, and I accept that answer.

No more new tabs, no clicking links, just a single conversation, and a sort of final answer. The internet is getting flatter. The depth of search shallower. Promptism is the new search… and I wonder what the consequences are, what the price is, in finding convenient ‘truths’ that we just accept, and don’t bother researching or questioning?