Check-In Round
"What’s the best Thanksgiving food?"
Stuffing, duh.
A man and his delay.
Weeks upon weeks of articles accumulating!
Weeks upon weeks of guilt accumulating!
The combination of which means this edition is rife with other things to read and fairly skint on my own thoughts. When the battery is dead the jump start isn’t always the prettiest of procedures but it tends to get things moving again.
What Has My Attention
Forgiveness, peace, and productivity
This resonates. My inner critic is cacophonous and doesn’t take time off. When I’m able to distract him or quiet him down I feel like a totally different (and better) person.
How to feel nothing now, in order to feel more later
It’s super easy to laugh at privileged tech bros doing “dopamine fasts.” I know, because I’ve done it (the laughing, not the fasting). That being said, I think there’s something to the idea of periodically challenging yourself to do something difficult or different just for the sake of seeing how you handle it. Maybe just don’t do it in such a way that it affects the people around you, eh?
Our guide to daily life
Did not expect a company selling kitchen utensils to have an actually helpful and actually good “guide to daily enjoyment.”
The way of less
I love a good kick in the pants reminder about minimalism. My “way of less” is less (ahem) about physical possession nowadays and more about commitments and projects and hobbies.
Forget Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics: Try being Epicurean
I feel like Stoicism has gotten a bit of a bad rap recently from Silicon Valley tech bros trying to manufacture struggle in their astoundingly privileged lives, but I remain a fan. That being said, this article has made me want to dive deeper into Epicureanism.
Creating the habit of not being busy
I try very hard to never say that I’m busy. But I do spend a lot of my time feeling busy.
A piece of advice I wish I’d included in Digital Minimalism
“When you get home after work, you put your phone on a table in your foyer near your front door. Then — and this is the important part — you leave it there until you next leave the house.”
Discipline challenge: What my mind does when I commit to hard things
Big week for Leo Babauta and Zen Habits in this newsletter. His recap of a 45-day discipline challenge reminds me a lot of the feelings I had during my digital detox (part 1 & part 2).
Updates
Max and I finished season one of Fields of Work. We are planning on a few surprises over the next couple months before coming out with something even better for season two later in the spring. Plenty of time to get caught up with the back catalog.
Closing Round
Working: I’m leading an internal initiative to get some external writers working for The Ready. Want to pitch me something?
Eating: Trying Freshly to see if I can short-circuit my inclination to order delivery when I’m tired and unmotivated. Jury is still out.
Drinking: I did an experiment where I only drank Maxwell House from an automatic drip coffee maker for a week as an exercise in combatting “comfort creep.” Let’s just say I’m glad it was only for a week.
Listening: I’m listening to the audiobook of A Life of One’s Own by Marion Milner and it’s astounding how much of what she does is the same thing I’ve done (or tried to do) with my own commitment to personal experimentation. Pretty eery, considering it was written in the 1930’s.
Playing: Fired up Overwatch for the first time in a long time. Also beat What The Golf which is maybe the best iOS game I’ve played in a long time.
Until next time!
Your friend,
Sam