I really enjoy night photography. I like the standing-around-ness of it, while you wait for your exposure to finish. I like the way the world looks different in an over-exposed night-light. I like the ethereal look of anythign that’s moved.
This photo was taken at f/7.1, at ISO 400 with an exposure time of 106 seconds. Fisherman unknown.
I recently read the book Crazy Busy by Dr. Hallowell. It’s a book that focuses primarily on disconnecting from technology to spend more time with yourself and those around you. It raised some very valid points about taking time back for yourself. Taking time to think. Taking time to be creating. Taking time to play.
The main thing that I took away from it, however, was a system for whether you should bother doing something or not. I have been using this system for the last few months since reading the book, and it works.
Think of the activity you need/want/should do. Not a “pay your bills” activity. Something like “go visit a relative”. First of all, assign a value from 1 to 5 for the amount of effort it will take, where the least amount of effort is a 5 and the most amount of effort is a 1. Then assign a value from 1 to 5 for how good it will make you feel. Either while you’re doing it, or aftwards having done it. 1 is that you’ll feel bad, and 5 is that you’ll feel great. Many warm and fuzzy moments. Then assign a value between 1 and 5 for the impact it will have on things other than you. Will it make your relative very happy if you go? Will it save a bag of kittens from inevitable doom? 1 is that it won’t make a difference to anyone or anything, and 5 that it’ll make a huge difference to someone.
Multiply these numbers together, and you’ll end up with a number between 1 and 125, and here’s the trick. You now need to set yourself a threshold for doing things. My threshold is quite low, I think, only needing a to be over 15 for me to think I should do it. And I should definitely do it if it scores higher than 25. Obviously these aren’t hard and fast rules, so keep it loose and go with the flow.
If something is moderately hard work, like a 2 on that inverted scale, and I’ll probably feel pretty good afterwards, so a 2 for that too, but the impact for those around me (say the person I visit) is really great, and scores a 5, then I should probably do that activity because it scores a 20. If it was easier to do, and scored a 3 for effort, then it’s suddenly a 30 and I should definitely do it.
Was writing this post difficult? No – 5 out of 5. Do I feel good now that I”m finished because I’ve done something creative? Definitely – 3. Will it help someone? Maybe – 2. It scores 30/125.
Signal, if you haven’t already heard of it, is an encrypted messaging app for both Android and iOS. My experience with Signal doesn’t extend into the iOS realm, but the experience won’t be that different, with the exception of iMessage being thrown into the mix.
There are many good articles about what Signal does, and how it does it. You can start by reading the app’s own page here: https://signal.org. There is no real point, I don’t think, to rewrite something that someone else has already written, probably in a much more elegant way.
Why do I use Signal? I like my communications to be encrypted. Not because I’m worried about law enforcement intercepting what I’m sending to my friends. Not because I’m worried about people stealing my phone and hacking into my SMSes. I like my comms to be encrypted because of all the companies profiting from knowing information about me. I don’t know if a regular SMS is being scanned for keywords by my telco, and that information is being sold to advertisers. But if you switch to an encrypted messaging app, there’s no way for them to do that.
When I talk to people, I often get the question of “How is it different from Whatsapp?”, and while in a broad way it does very much the same thing, there are two differences that sets it apart.
The first is that it replaces your standard SMS app, and only needs your mobile number to work. It will send a regular, unencrypted SMS to your buddies who don’t have Signal, and seamlessly switch to encrypted comms when they finally listen to you and install Signal too. You don’t need to remember how you communicate with whom. It’s all there in the one app. And, as a bit of a cherry on top, the company is a not-for-profit run by privacy wonks.
The second is that it’s not owned by Facebook. Even though Facebook can’t necessarily read what’s in the messages that are sent with Whatsapp, it does give them a map of who is communicating with whom. And the less Facebook knows about me, the happier I am.
Touching briefly on the iMessage thing, it’s, to me, much the same as Whatsapp, but maybe slightly worse. Unless Apple have devised some new cryptographic methods for messaging, they must have access to the encryption keys used for messages if you can recover the messages from iCloud to a new device without access to the old device. This is bad, and means they could potentially read the messages too.
Download Signal today and give it a go: https://signal.org/
I really like numbers. I like graphs. I like plots. I like tables. I like SQL queries. It was pretty predictable that I’d like having a Fitbit on my wrist. No surprise that I’d find myself poring over the graphs in the app, checking my resting heart-rate (56-58 bpm when I’ve not had any red wine for a couple of days, 61-63 bpm when I have, FYI), my active hours, how many steps I’ve done and when, and probably because I can be a bit* competitive at times, how my steps stack up against my Fitbit friends steps.
But – what did I have the Fitbit for? I had it to help me keep track of my exercise (check) and improve my fitness levels. It just didn’t help improve my fitness. It didn’t push me to do more steps. It didn’t motivate me to run. It didn’t really help me improve at all. So it’s gone.
When I stopped wearing it, I felt quite a bit of relief, which I didn’t expect. I thought I’d miss it. Miss having those graphs, and tables of information to sift through. But instead, I felt liberated. When I go for a walk, I’m going because I want to. Because it feels nice. Because it’s good for me. Not so that I can compete against other people, who most likely aren’t competing back. To be completely honest, there have been a couple of times I’ve gone for a walk and thought that it’d be nice to have the steps recorded because it would have added a decent chunk to my tally, but then I quickly realise that it’s not important. It’s important that I’m moving – it’s not important that I’m winning.
Anxiety levels: slightly lower than they were before.
Plan: figure out what to get rid of next.
I’ve ridden quite a bit in the last year. Last October I rode more than 600 km as part of the Great Cycle Challenge (which I will probably do again this year). I rode over 4,500 km in 2018. I climbed more than 41,000 metres. 263 hours in the saddle.
This isn’t a lot for some people, and that’s exactly what I want to write about: Challenging People.
I don’t mean people who are difficult to deal with. I mean people who challenge you to do more/better/faster/longer. I’m surrounded by people who climb hills faster, descend faster, ride further, ride longer. To the extent where when I’ve been for a 90 km ride, or been for a ride where I’ve climbed 1,000 metres, and I tell people about it (which I do like doing because it’s a good source of praise), I don’t really feel like I’ve done anything special. The achievement, something which many would consider to be big (or even impossible), has been completely normalised/trivialised.
I don’t think this is a bad thing – it’s helping me push myself to ride further and faster.
This all came to me when I was listening to a podcast by Adam Spencer (I was riding up the Patrick Joncker Veloway at the time). He was interviewing an ultra-marathoner, Michael Hull, who fell into being an ultra-marathoner partly by accident/serendipity, because he was surrounded by endurance athletes in his teens, and it was the norm. The details might be a bit fuzzy beacuse it’s a long time since I listened to the podcast, but I think it went something like that. There’s a link to the podcast at the bottom of the page.
I didn’t surround myself with challenging people intentionally. It just happened, and I’m really glad it did. I’ve challenged myself significantly in the last 12 months, both mentally and physically, and I don’t think I would have had I not had these challenging people in my life.
Now – this has covered the adjective definition of challenging, but there’s also the verb definition. I hope that I’m also challenging people when I talk about what I’ve done. I’m hoping that while I’m telling people about my achievements (and getting a bunch of praise for it), it’s also pushing someone to try something new. Try to ride further than normal. Up a steeper hill than normal.
I think if everyone had challenging people in their life, and spent time challenging people, we’d all achieve more. And achieving feels good.
Adam Spencer’s Big Questions – What’s it like to run for your life through fire.