Category: Life Design

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Life Design The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Screening relationships

via Shweta.

Maintaining an extended simulacrum of reality is hard when mediated through today’s state of the art video-conferencing technology:

Even some people whose values still align with those of their friends have found their relationships suffering during the pandemic.

The reason for their drift is not rooted in ideological differences, but rather distance.

While video calls over Zoom or Facetime have helped, many have said that after spending most of the year staring at a screen, they’ve had enough.

– The pandemic has destroyed friendships and divided families

Amidst the talk of work forever being altered by the pandemic and of the dawn of the remote work age, it’s worth acknowledging that the relationships built in the real world are going to be tough to maintain through screens and phone calls. That the relationships formed in the remote world are likely to be different – not necessarily better or worse, but different – from those in the real world.

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Life Design Wellness when Always-On

Signalling quantity

… how do I show that “in the office” when I’m far away, and two time zones behind the vast majority of my team? By dropping links to articles (to show that I’m reading); by commenting on other people’s links (to show that I’m reading Slack); by participating in conversations (to show that I’m engaged). Evidencing that I’m doing work instead of, well, doing work.

You can LARP [Live Action Role Play] your job in person (holding lots of meetings, staying late and getting there early as a show of ‘presentism’) and digitally (sending lots of emails, spending a lot of time on Slack, or whatever group chat platform your organization uses).

– LARPing your job

But at the same time, with the new flexibility with people relocating wherever they’ve wanted to, working on “knowledge work”

Sometimes I’m far more productive if I’m on a hike, without my phone or Slack, but just hanging out in my own mind; sometimes I’m more productive after goofing off on Twitter. When you’re working remotely, how do you “show” that you’re reading? That you’re thinking?

(Featured Image Photo Credit: Joshua Ness/Unsplash)

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Life Design RG.org Writing

One year streak

Today is one year since I began publishing daily on the site. When I completed three hundred days in early October, I had written a Twitter thread about this practice means to me and what it’s done for me. I was surprised I had not linked to it here. Here goes:

All of this is still true. I intend to keep publishing – and there is something else, complementary, in the works. Soon!

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Life Design The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Sitting

In an article on attention, this bit about physical strength:

“The damage done by sitting 8+ hours a day is underrated. You need a way to offset this damage, especially if you plan to work in this field for decades.”

– Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer

There are enough studies about the ills of sitting for extended periods of time that are a quick search away. We have also seen earlier this year how I use the Fitbit wearable device’s hourly reminder to get 250 steps in as a guard against sitting for too long.

But in terms of exercise, I have seen the most payoff from simply strengthening my core. A strong core means better posture, which means less slouching, which means less strain on your back. It means less tension on your shoulders as you use your keyboard and trackpad. And because you’re sitting straighter, it means you breathe better – coming full circle to attention. Strengthening a single area has significantly improved how tired and unfocused I feel by the time I wind up work.

(Featured Image Photo Credit: Anthony Riera/Unsplash)

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Discovery and Curation Life Design Writing

Outlets for fun and creativity

The founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov:

We live in an era when the possibilities for human creativity are endless. One can invent robots, edit genes, design virtual worlds… There are so many exciting unknown areas to explore. I hope that more people will discover the enjoyment of building things for others. I hope that one day we, as a species, will turn away from the self-destructive path of never-ending consumption to a fulfilling journey of creating a better world for ourselves and those around us.

I think he is mixing two messages up. Most of his post is about the ills of the unsustainable, mindless consumption of food and goods typical of the Western world. Somewhere in the post is a mention of his realisation that “the most rewarding kind of occupation is creating things, not consuming them” which led him to create the Telegram project. He seems to have combined both of these messages to make a value judgement about consumption and creation in general.

I have a different, more positive take on this.

We have spoken often about consumption in the context of content, for instance the mindless scrolling through social media. While it’s important to be mindful of and reduce that sort of consumption, it’s also important to create outlets for self-expression other than like and retweet/share that are built into social media. Your own blog. Or newsletter. Or topic-specific Twitter account. Or a public Notion page to which you keep adding. Or a YouTube channel. The possibilities are endless today.

Then as you consume vigorously, indulging multiple interests and spanning different mediums – music, podcasts, writing, streaming video, chat groups – you express to the world the best of them, and your thinking about them.

I came to this realisation late, but I have taken this to heart.

Taken together, these projects don’t cover all of my interests, and don’t even begin to approach the Telegram founder Pavel’s references to building robots and editing genes. Instead they are a set of fun, lightweight outlets for me to express idle and structured thoughts and reactions as I read, watch and listen to things I discover and like.

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Life Design

The time – money bargain is changing

A few times a year I think about this post that’s now over ten years old:

Under [a 40 hour work week] people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.

The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.

We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

– Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed, Raptitude

This is not a post that rails against capitalism, or suggests that employment is a corporate conspiracy – a few quick Google searches throw up much in that area for entertainment.

I share this simply so that we’re aware of the bargain we make – money for time. Especially since time is your only finite resource.

We’ve discussed the finiteness of time before in the context of attention being a scarce resource, but there’s an opportunity cost of time for everything in your life. Since you can’t do anything but spend your time, do so wisely.

The move to working from home is a plus for many of us because of the inherent flexibility. Depending on the amount of agency you have at your job, you can take a mid day drive or a nap. Do the crossword. Fix yourself a quick lunch. Take your calls from a park, and continue on a quiet walk once you hang up the phone.

But perhaps most importantly, you can indulge (some) of your interests during a workday that otherwise would have to wait until the evening or the weekend.

By asserting more control over your time, there’ll be less pressure on your to make up for it by spending money. Spending time on something you love is also more rewarding than spending money on it.

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Life Design

Staying carefree through optionality

I’ve optimised my life for optionality. I do this by being judicious about what obligations to take on and which not. This means I miss out on a lot, but allows me to give the few things that I do take on the degree of attention I’d like to give them. Recently I came across this post:

Be very deliberate about taking on obligations. The obvious example is debt, which I talk about all the time. Most people make debt decisions based on their current situation, and not an evaluation of all reasonable outcomes over the term of the loan. Rather than worrying about the debt before they assume it, they are forced to worry about it over the term of the loan… Obligations extend beyond finances, though. Everything you purchase, especially large purchases, comes with some obligation.

– How to be carefree, Tynan.com

This was another, new way of looking at my principles. Consciously minimising obligations not only means I can focus on things that matter to me but also that I remain mostly carefree. Of course the things that I decide to involve myself with will have their worries, but I know they’re part of the journey.

End note: I’m still not sure why optionality is valuable to me. I’ve been told that it’s a fear of commitment, that I shirk responsibility. As I’ve cultivated a better relationship with myself, I’ve begun to realise that I have always been a curious person – more than average, and about a wide range of things. Because it’s difficult to indulge one’s curiosity without flexibility, it’s natural I’d want my life to have optionality so I could explore or experience things I was interested in at any given time.