A few Measly Steps a Day

delightful · Feb 13, 2023, 10:45 AM

R. you're a tougher cookie than I am. I'm seriously impressed with five meetings in one day. Me - I'm trying to increase the amount of work I do. I'm feeling very mortal lately, and I can see myself dying saying "wait a minute - I didn't mean to spend all that time goofing off.

So happy stepping.

Revu2 · Feb 17, 2023, 03:29 PM

"I’m still not sure how I turned into a crazy person. The way to proceed was obvious. I should pick a piece of this albatross, throw the rest away, and focus in on it. Do what I had done for years—suck it up, get serious, knock something out, and move on with my life." ~ Tim Urban, Wait but Why blogger, on why it took 6 years to release his book.

Measly steps:

suck it up
get serious
knock something out
move on

"Hahahahahahaha." The gods' mirth that we dare to make plans.

Revu2 · Feb 22, 2023, 10:30 AM

Yikes, added stuff, hard stuff, to do. Sort of poked about for an online todo list maker. Have wordflowy, but it limits me to only so many times per month, and i'm going to be doing/checking off/adding a lot.

Tried rapidtables list maker, checkli, and checkvist. Finally returned to my steady standard: Keep and Share. It's free for solo/personal use, easy to add items, can filter by different criteria, and each item has a notes section for more details.

delightful · Feb 22, 2023, 10:40 PM

Hi, R.

So it took me an hour on the computer to order 45 memoirs for my mother-in-law's memorial. I had to change password, edit credit card, find KDP publishing, and receiving four codes (I think) and approving four actions. And I was denied entry into my Amazon account multiple times. On the other hand, it took me about five minutes to order five books straight from Amazon. The only problem with the five-book order - It had the wrong name and address on my credit card! You'd think someone would have caught that. I can't figure out how to delete the bad info. Using your golf analogy I think that's about a bogey 25.

Hope you're having a better day. Oh, other than that, today was a good day.

delightful · Mar 01, 2023, 02:16 PM

Hi, R.

Sorry I"ve been AFK so much lately. My goal is to increase my workload by a half-hour each day every week. When you're retired, it's so easy to goof off, and I'm not happy being that person. Besides everything else, I shove away those things that are hard, and they don't just go away no matter how much I want them to. That's why the last post about fixing credit accounts that had to be updated. I'm trying to be proactive even though I always feel like a crook dealing with credit numbers. (Don't ask why - I know it doesn't make sense. It's just that I've been brought up to believe that everything is my fault, including getting hacked because I should have known better. To add to the fun of it all, I get hacker mail saying that my account is overdue, and I have a hard time finding out which is real and which is phony. The cops said not to bother, but someday I want to copy and past all the hacker mail I have in my trash can and send it to them.

Revu2 · Mar 04, 2023, 02:06 AM

Hiya, oh yeah, I've endured hassles with identity theft and such. Full on pain in the arse.

I like your goal of an extra half-hour every day. Is that all at once or added in bits, like if you work in 3 rounds, each one is 10 min longer than customary?

I might be a tad more satisfied when I can imagine the work of a day fitting closer to what I actually get done. Say, for today, I wanted to begin our partnership taxes and authorize my new credit cards (2) and then update the sites I have on autopay. One is which is Gig cars (drive and park rental "sharing" cars). BEFORE any of the mis-named sharing car companies, I had the idea. And what a load of work to pull it off. Several have tried and failed or fallen back in Seattle: Flexcar merged with Zipcar, and Car2Go, keyed to the cute Smart Cars, tanked. There was also Lime for a while, and Touro (might still be out there) and another one.

GIG (Get in and Go) cars are holding on. They are backed by the Automobile Association of America (AAA) of towing fame. One issue for me is that it is smart phone only, so I'm forced to use my iPad, and the map view is much smaller than what I can see at once on my Mac.

For mysterious reasons I could not figure out, my former credit card never worked, so I couldn't use the service because payment is pre-authorized. With the new card, everything seems to be set up. I'm going to find a car soon and drive it around the block to test it out.

Took less than 15 minutes to punch in my new card authorization. And the rest of the afternoon dealing with the updates and GIG.

Nothing done on the taxes. Moved to tomorrow's list, I guess.

I'm tired. Good night.

Revu2 · Mar 07, 2023, 08:52 AM

I've been enjoying using several lists and apps for my 'second brain.' Here's the run:

sometimes a google doc
Workflowy ~ fee above a certain level of use
ListMoz 2 lists ~ very basic, one for daily reminders, one for further away
Keep and Share, free plan. Did hit the donate button and accidentally paid twice on paypal when my first payment didn't seem to go through. Haven't sent anything since 2016, when I joined up, so less than 2 cups of coffee.

So, the question becomes which should be the main 2nd Brain or do I now stop with 4 and only remember to try all of them when seeking some blip of information?

This single place to track method has a name and history. Of course, there are websites and apps for everything. Check it out here: The Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method.

Workflowy has the most varied ways of adding items like images, video, and documents.
K & S has the best ease of use, easy to add due dates, and a notes function for greater details.
ListMoz is extremely basic.

delightful · Mar 08, 2023, 06:32 PM

Hi R,
So far, so good. My first week, I aimed for 5 hrs/day and nailed it with time to spare. The second week was 5.5 hrs., and that was okay too. This week, it's six hrs. per day, and that looks okay too.
I had an appt with my primary care doctor that I like Yay! My insurance dropped her last year, and it took me a year to get the insurance sorted out so I could see her again. Interesting bit - Contra Costa County retirement pays part of our insurance for Kaiser, Health Net, and Contra Costa''s own health plan. It looks like Health Net is getting out of Contra Costa County. Do you see a problem here?????
Meanwhile, I'm trying to get back in the land of the living. COVID reinforced my natural introverted nature, and I'm trying to reverse the trend to stay home and do nothing. Hence the goal to increase what I do by a half hour per day each week.
In case you're wondering, I'm a happier person if i get out and visit with people.
I guess that's it for me.
Happy stepping.

delightful · Mar 13, 2023, 08:07 PM

HI, R,

I've been looking at website designers, and I've been asking for examples of their work.

Some of them are amazing. I now want to spend way more money than I had planned on. I am stoked!!! (Very dated expression, but appropriate. Here's my favorite one: Dogstudio. Multidisciplinary Creative Studio.

delightful · Mar 13, 2023, 08:08 PM

HI, R,

I've been looking at website designers, and I've been asking for examples of their work.

Some of them are amazing. I now want to spend way more money than I had planned on. I am stoked!!! (Very dated expression, but appropriate. Here's my favorite one: Dogstudio. Multidisciplinary Creative Studio.
D, signing off.

Revu2 · Mar 15, 2023, 10:52 AM

Hello Ms D, great studio you've found. Bold. Creative. Likely very, very expensive.

There's this product/site called Pip Decks. Decks of cards for storytelling, running workshops, etc. The first deck I looked at was $200! So I signed on for the free stuff, meaning daily promo emails.

One of his emails talks about the status hit from having expensive stuff. Part is you know it yourself, but there's a part when other people know it too. And both know the other knows. Rolex watches. Gucci handbags. Apple computers. I'm only 1 for 3 on this list.

So he shared his pricing journey. Before publishing his first run, people said they'd pay no than £30. When he came back with real decks he sold out at £40 the few pilot decks he had. And so on up the price ladder.

He also offer the entire workshop deck for free on his site and has an email reflecting on why anyone would now pay for it.

Today I finished off the 31 Day Luck School series. I'm not going to replace it with anything else right now. A lot else going on, plus I'd like to get some experience in tuning for better luck.

r

delightful · Mar 18, 2023, 01:18 PM

So cool! I was looking through emails and found a list of great quotes which included this one:

by Lynx » Tue Jan 07, 2020 12:32 pm
Pessimism is intellectually seductive and the arguments always sound smarter, especially when they dovetail with our own worries. You think this period is more frightening than the sixteen month recession between July 1981 and November 1982 only because you weren’t there and you haven’t studied history. Your frame of reference is here and now, not then – with a 14% unemployment rate and 15% inflation. As Peter Lynch reminds us about that era, “Sensible professionals wondered if they should take up hunting and fishing, because soon we’d all be living in the woods, gathering acorns. Then the moment of greatest pessimism, when 8 out of 10 swore we where heading into the 1930s the stock market rebounded with a vengeance and suddenly all was right with the world.”

That’s what usually happens.

It brought me some happy memories. Hope it does the same or you, R

delightful · Mar 18, 2023, 01:20 PM

p.s. Last line of my last post. "or" should be "for"

Revu2 · Mar 19, 2023, 11:03 PM

Hi Ms D. That's pretty sharp witted. I am sick up to my neck with all the passive 'hoping' and active whining that someone "shares" in nearly every convo. The concept that pessimism is easy and a coward's way out of acting comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

"It is more prudent to be a pessimist. It is an insurance against disappointment, and no one can say “I told you so,” which is how the prudent condemn the optimist. The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy. Of course there is a foolish, shifty kind of optimism which is rightly condemned. But the optimism which is will for the future should never be despised, even if it is proved wrong a hundred times. It is the health and vitality which a sick man should never impugn. Some men regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it is irreligious to hope and prepare oneself for better things to come in this life. They believe in chaos, disorder and catastrophe. That, they think, is the meaning of the present events and in sheer resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for the preservation of life and for the generations yet unborn. Tomorrow may be the day of judgement. If it is, we shall gladly give up working for a better future, but not before."

~ Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1939/1953. Letters and Papers from Prison, originally published as Prisoner for God. Edited by Eberhard Bethge; translated by Reginald H. Fuller. New York, Macmillian, pp. 32-33.

I think this might have been from his diary hidden in the rafters of his house so the Nazis could not find them.

Yeah, Barbara created a very special online place and I miss her and that forum a lot.

delightful · Mar 20, 2023, 10:06 AM

I just reread that quote. A few days ago, I was trying to remember your logon name on the Boards and I couldn't. So - coincidence of coincidences - a friend sent me a list of quotes by famous people, and there was your name. I read the quote, but it didn't really do much for me at the time.

Then, today, I read it and it hit me. I'm a pessimist, or at least I was. And the quote just knocked me off my chair. (well, figuratively.) Yes, pessimism saves you from that horrible feeling of dreaming and having the dream stomped on. But when I saw myself in the quote, it was like I just dumped a lifetime of garbage in favor of hope.
I guess I'm not a total pessimist if I can keep writing after years of rejection.
I guess being a realist is the best of all.

I know this euphoric feeling won't last. (realism or pessimism?) But I think my life will be a lot happier for a long time.

If Jews could stay positive during WW II and freedom fighters could stay positive. maybe I can too.

So thank you.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

I wish I had a therapist to talk to.

Maybe I'll post something somewhere on the forums if I can find a thread on depression.

delightful · Mar 23, 2023, 04:54 PM

My optimism took a blow. I decided to get a website. The company I chose was a scam.

Revu2 · Mar 23, 2023, 10:14 PM

Hi Ms D, bummer you got sucked in. There's no corner of philosophy which drives me battier than this optimism, pessimism, realist, puzzle. Fundamentally, it's not at all tied to a forecast or outcome.
Lynx (my aka on Sher's forum) wrote:

Just read a reference to the Stockdale Paradox. James Stockdale was the highest ranking officer in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War. He served 7.5 years, organized resistance among the American prisoners, thwarted efforts to be used as propaganda, etc.

It just happens he found this sustaining philosophy during a War. I'm not a fan of war, especially this one, but there's something to learn from everything. That said, here goes.

He managed using Stoic philosophy (which I mostly know through Seneca's writings). Picking up now from wikipedia:

In a business book by James C. Collins called Good to Great, Collins writes about a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.[18]

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.[19]

When Collins asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:

Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.[19]

Stockdale then added:

This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

His, "I never lost faith" is the quality of optimism Bonhoeffer talks to. The others who cracked were forecasting events they had no control over. Keeping the faith, that one can control and Stockdale did.

Keep the Faith, Revu2

delightful · Mar 27, 2023, 07:13 PM

Good point, R. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to protect myself from scams before I stick my neck out again.

Revu2 · Apr 01, 2023, 03:51 AM

Just got scammed myself! $20 via a fake site selling supposedly discounted 3M products. Paid with PayPal. After the required "reach out to vendor" steps (2 email follow ups that I know won't be answered) I'll file a Resolution complaint with PP and take it up from there.

Over the past 2 years we've had a couple of scams run thru PP and once the complaint get's properly opened, PP works pretty quickly to see what they can do.

We'll see this time around. In a book on the origins of PP I skimmed, they understood from the beginning that they were making money out of "trust" and had to do their part to uphold the [implicit] deal. Just a long way to say they started out taking this type of stuff very seriously.

Each new challenge is its own thing, so I'll report on how this one turns out.

Meanwhile, I've decided I'll need to test out the noise reduction ear muffs in person because the other one's I've tried off Ebay were too tight.

Oh, and I "returned" them to a seller on Ebay, paying $16 originally, which included tax, and paying shipping and tax again (?) to send them back. Net for the round trip: $6.

Burned, but too little to bother.
Oy

Revu2 · Apr 04, 2023, 10:37 AM

I track my biorhythms. Have since I read one of the first books about them. First by hand with stencils cut to the cycles on graph paper and then on computer spreadsheets.

Interestingly, there are a few people who write that biorhythms (Br) are pseudo-science, meaning almost-science or mimic-science. That's what the genius editors at Wikipedia let through the last time I checked. That's for them to figure out. The charts match my experience and that's good enough for this n = 1.

That's the prolog. To the classic 3 cycles—23 day physical cycles, 28 day emotional cycle, and 33 day mental cycles—I made a 4th. It's a average of the other 3, cept it never drops under zero. This ranges from nearly zero—I joke that people should check my pulse—to about 8—throw me in a lake to cool off.

As I puzzled over how much to set as my work time everyday it occurred to me that I could map the average cycle. Say it's 6.4 today, that would be 6.4 hours or 6 hrs, 24 min. This is very cool as I'll give myself more work time when my numbers are higher and I feel less fatigue, and less work time when they are lower and I tire faster.

Trying it this week and will report back.

R

delightful · Apr 06, 2023, 03:55 PM

I think your plan to use biorhythms to plan how much work you can comfortably do in a day will succeed. Most of the time the biorhythm calculator agrees with how I feel. One time it didn't, but that's only one time. And there are other factors to consider - working with a friend, doing something I want to do vs something I don't want to do, illness, bad things happening to me, and so on.
Coincidently, I've been wondering about the same thing. I started by setting a goal for myself of working 5 hrs. each day. The next week I increased it to 5.5 hrs. and so on. I'm up to 8 hrs. I find that five to six hours is a comfortable goal.

delightful · Apr 06, 2023, 04:26 PM

More on goals. I include everything constructive as work that counts towards my daily goals. The good thing about this is that the activities I don't want to do, such as making phone calls, get done. This is a good thing since a lot of chores that I might otherwise put off got done - taxes, finding and signing up for health insurance, Cleaning up the mess following the scam (I haven't finished that one yet.) Applying for a new credit card (also not finished.)

I managed to activate the card. The problem seems to be that my phone was breaking up as I was entering the many numbers they were asking for. I assumed that the problem was that I was somehow blocked from using the card. Anyway, problem solved.

On a more interesting subject - I want to buy a Karaoke machine. I think I'll use my newly activated credit card and buy it now.

Good vibes and good wishes

Revu2 · Apr 07, 2023, 04:54 AM

Hi D, hoping you get the credit card stuff straightened out soon. And about the Karaoke machine, how cool is that. You must love to sing.

Yes, I also write daily goals with everything I need or want to do. Anything that takes time, even meals and hygiene routines. I bracket the work stuff with "office hours." The most tedious of my office hours is slogging through email.

I'm always changing up how I make a list. For a while I thought this was a fault, why can't I stick to one system? Now I think of it as a creativity. To misquote the playwright Irene Fornes: there's a part that loves lists and a part that would rather not, and the list maker has to keep tricking the avoider.

I also have several lists ON at the same time. One is laid out mindmap style, one is online, and one is a daily duty list I create on scrap strips of paper. I get a small happy feeling when I can crumble this sheet and toss it aside.

Discovering this condo leader role is a time suck. Mostly because I have no control over the complexity and timing of what I will be charged to deal with. This week it's a broken garage door. A month ago it was a leak in the roof. And so on. And this is stuff that requires reaching businesses while they are open, so I can't put them off to the evening or weekends. I'm also drafting new rules, and dealing with a couple of owners who would rather I just not do a good job. A good job means I have to pester them and remind them of they are expected/required to do. Or engage directly with their renters about the same stuff.

As I'm working and also wanting to return to investing/trading during market hours, my days get really crowded. Yucksville & tiring.

Today after running errands via bus in the rain, I came back and napped for 5 hours.

It's my life at the moment. Guess I'm still breathing. R.

Revu2 · Apr 10, 2023, 11:49 AM

Awoke Saturday irritated at my circumstances. I have a half-shelf full of various card decks so I gathered 3 of them and sat with my mood. I have an I Ching Card Deck with the hexagrams on cards, I have a game design deck by Jess Schell with over 100 cards on lenses for designing games (life?), and I have a deck called Mixed Emotions with 60 emotions on cards.

About 90 minutes of mixing and matching these cards left me with an important Life Insight: I'm most irritated when 2 goals compete. Usually they compete for my Time On Task—which shall it be, Task A, NO, Task B asserts. Then A pushes on my schedule. But B sneaks in. Oy.

This time, Duty won (B) the Lead while Desire (A) stepped back. I then have to put a bracket on Duty so Desire will have its turn.

Once I sorted this out, first with cards and then emotionally, all calm broke loose.

Revu2

delightful · Apr 10, 2023, 05:25 PM

HI, R.

I empathize with your thoughts on lists. They work for me. When the procrastination gets too great, I write up my list of things to do on the Measly step boards. Admittedly, I haven't done it that much lately. But I do seem to get more done if I write a list and check off the items than if I just try to keep track of them in my head. Funny how selective memory is. I seem to - completely accidently, of course - forget the ones I don't want to do until I get to that point where I have to do them or suffer consequences. At the moment, I'm in a good place. I've caught up with all but one of the pressing chores.

I had my family over last Saturday, and the Karaoke worked great. My son-in-law set it up. He's valuable on two counts: He's good at electronics and he likes figuring them out. I think I could have figured it out, but . . . He's also one of those people who would pick up the mike and start singing. For a karaoke party, you have to have one of those people to start the singing. I wouldn't mind being that person, except that I can't carry a tune.

D, signing off.

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