Procrastination Chronicles # 9: Dishes, Always Dishes

On the path to greatness, there will be 100 overcomings.

I will chronicle my attempts to overcome procrastination.  My technique is to start small, really small.

My favorite post in the series is #3 Dealing with a Bunch of Crap.

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When I got married, I was so happy to get rid of the task of doing laundry that I conceded lawn work, the litter box, and doing dishes.  However, due to this, dishes have become the scourge of my existence.

I had purchased a dish rack, and ideally I would use it every day for the dishes made that day (or perhaps the previous day).  I had a rhythm like that going for a while.  I would come home, put on Pandora, and do a few dishes, let them air dry and put them up . . . neat and tidy.  Great theory.

But sometimes life gets away from me.  When this happens, the dishes pile up more and more, and I am still susceptible to same feelings as pretty much everyone else.

The answer is still the same: find a small enough slice that I engineer my own compliance, and then go ahead and start Pandora.  This is just simply how I get crap done.

This time my tiny slice was soaking two dishes.  Also, I *gasp* let myself use the dish washing machine to get the big batch done.

My wife doesn't believe me when I say I will be able to do all our dishes by hand when our dish washer breaks (as all dish washers everywhere, along with all other machines, will eventually).  Only time will tell, but I am optimistic in my ability to change.

But for this time, I will go ahead and use the luxury of the machine to move past procrastination.

Not to Say Games of Chance Don't Have Lessons

I wrote not too long ago about some lessons that you can learn by playing Go, and I came to the conclusion that Go is better served as a game to reinforce those lessons rather than teach them; in other word, you have to be in the right frame of mind.

Backgammon gives me a different set of lessons, with the same proviso that you wont learn (or be reminded) unless you are in an open state of mind.

Being a game of chance, any game can be lost if the dice turn totally against you.  The same sources that read Go as a game of competing with yourself, and Chess as a game of competing against others, therefore conclude that Backgammon is a game of competing against chance.  I to some extend disagree.  Any one game, or small sample, of Backgammon will be about luck, Fate, chance (and that makes it possible to occasionally drum up some games), but Backgammon and Poker helped me to see that such short term results are a illusion.

Back in my younger days -- which Jim Morrison so aptly described as being a time when things were simpler and more confused -- I would worry often about my luck.  I even complained about my bad beats.  I knew this was wrong, but I didn't feel it.  So I make a little log of my good luck.  I but some bad beats on people, sure.  But I also had longer than average streaks of good luck holding up, too.  Doing this changed my outlook on life, and helped me to understand the importance of the long run, a phrase often given lip service, but I don't think truly respected enough.

Games of chance gently whisper the lesson that the ebbs and flows of luck do not heed our wishes.  Will we listen to those whispers or scream at the outcomes?  Perhaps not as great a poet as Jim Morrison, but still a good one, Kipling asks us to "meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same" (seriously, read the poem if you never have).  In the case of Backgammon, because the game's variables are mathematical, and demonstrable by computers, you can see your variance even more clearly, if you are willing to look.  Life really is more mysterious than a game, but all those confounding variables almost beg us to come up with simplistic narratives about why we succeed or fail, which adds an extra layer of illusion to remove.

The understanding that our moment, no matter how pronounced the extremes of their swings, are illusions when taken in isolation, but instead are pieces of a much bigger whole . . . well, that sounds like as much like Eastern philosophy as my musings on Go,

Note: just because others don't see the practice of Backgammon (or Poker) in the same way, but get trapped in the illusions and their bad beat stories, doesn't change how I like the game as meditation-in-action.

Eh, one more note: while I don't let myself play Go when I am less than centered moods, sometimes I let myself play games of chance that way.  I try to keep the experience of Go pure, but I sometimes play Backgammon too quickly, and that means, sometimes, too emotionally.

You can't be perfect all the time. (All things in moderation, including moderation).

Cheap over Free Hobby

I have now taken to doing my long-form writing in my sloppy cursive, in paper notebooks.

To me, this is a case of frugality trumping cheapness (in other words, a frugal person will for value, but nothing else, a cheap person tries to never pay).. Backgammon, for example, is free, once the cost of the computer is taken into account (okay, electricity as well).  Notebooks, on the other hand, cost money.

But there is value in a notebook -- in the same way that there is value in a paper book.  They are environments that allow for the words and ideas to be the only focus of the experience.  E-readers and writing on computers allow for too many distractions. Paper has a value not in what is on it, but also in what it keeps out.

So far, it has taken a few weeks to go through a notebook, but I could see in the summer going through one a week, or more.  This hobby would then end up costing $0.30 - $1.00 a week.  I think that is well worth-it to be able to get a handle on my own thoughts, and perhaps make things that could change other's lives.

Productivity to Leave Productivity

The reason you learn productivity tricks is not so you can then be productive during more and more of the stuff that you weren't happy with doing.

No, be super productive in small bursts so that you can then have the greatest luxury of human existence: entire days without a schedule.  This is productivity to leave productivity.

But more than that, the default life menu is not just bad for how to manage workflow, it is also bad for how you will entertain yourself in the free time you say you do not have.

I find that both television and the what is now a standard web-page leave you in either a) a torpor or b) a state of agitation -- neither of which feel right, or at least wouldn't feel right absent constant conditioning and social pressures.  I know it is hard to do, but if you fast for while from tv or the internet, you will easily see the absurdity.

So maybe this post should be called "bursts of productivity to leave agitation." But that seems a bit wordy.

I think these mediums, because of commercial pressures, are designed for this kind of agitation.  They must leave us consumers wanting to consume more.

I recently did a writing assessment with my students, and so I had two hours of free time on my hands, and I got sucked into the vortex of "web-surfing."  At the end I felt icky, drained, empty, "hungry."  Also, in using Memrise to work on some language learning projects, I found it quite addictive . . . and that's still not a good thing.  When my wife comes in from work and says something to me, I should look up and smile.  I shouldn't stare at a screen . .  just . . . to . . . get . . . one .  . . more  .. . word.  And for that reason, I am considering transferring over material from Memrise to flash cards.  It's really easy to put down flash cards when someone walks into the room.  (Update: never did that.  I now use Anki, but only in the morning and for a far lower volume.)

Productivity tricks are tools, and us modern humans live under a constant threat of being enslaved in our own tools and systems.  This is not an argument against either tools or systems; rather, it is an argument for first using the tools to optimize for some kind of good, but then to quit the tool (or take a break from it) when you have reached that good.  Go find another pursuit,  ideally highly meaningful, to fill the time.

Productivity to leave productivity.

A Year in Permaculture

I have a confession to make: I am a very bad gardener of annual vegetables.  Horrible might be a better word.  I am inconsistent in watering.  I sometimes get behind in weeding.  And periods of neglect lead to many plants just burning up in the summer.  It is tragic.

But only recently, while thinking on a walk, did I realize that this fact does not disqualify me from teaching others about sustainability, or even gardening.

To develop a way of life that is sustainable, I think there are 3 keys:

1.) we need to develop perennial systems that do not rely on our inputs
2.) we need to realize how essentially right nature is.  This is terms of speed and rhythm.  We need to realize we are rhythmic, networked beings.  We are NOT mechanical or computational, in spite of how often we try to distort others (and, for a few people, ourselves) into fitting that mold.
3.) we need to use the internal combustion engine significantly less (which means we will have to eschew travel, even though that completely goes against a key tenant of the "life-style blog" school of thought).

I think I can help new comers down any of these three paths.  So even if I don't get as much lettuce or squash as some master gardeners, I can achieve my personal big hairy audacious goal of helping 100,000 people to live more sustainable lives.

200 Squats in a Set

Marking that one off my bucket list.

I had read once that when you hit 70 in a set, that 200 was achievable.  By my experience today, that seems to be correct.

Also, in learning the basics of Tai Chi I have been working on my breathing.  I have been taking a deep breath on the down motion of the squat and breath out as I moved up.  This changed the pace, and gave me more strength.

My day went first a set of 70 after doing Tai Chi.  Then a set of about a 100 at the end of lunch, but then the bell rang so I had to go to class.  And then I set to match a 100.  When I hit 100, I just kept going thinking I would get extremely fatigued.  Around 170, I was confident I would reach my goal.  I pushed through to a set of 210, just in case I had miscounted.  Therefore, I am absolutely certain that I have done 200 squats in a set.

How Do You Help 100,000 People?

The short answer: 1.) make something that can help people 2.) have that helpful thing go viral.

The last few years, particularly in my summers, I think I have been incubating some helpful things.  I have gone to the proverbial wilderness, and gathered my thoughts.  I have done my research, and I have been my reaching out.  This is the year I try to go viral.

I'm a big believer in the 5-year, 10-year, and even 15-year "over-night" success story.  But I also know that you never know when luck will strike you, so you should put yourself in a position for it to happen.

The first order of business is to keep putting stuff "out there" like this blog and tutorial videos.  After that, though, some of my goals will include studying what makes something go viral.  That probably sounds stupidly basic, but I think that is actually a lesson of this blog: to accomplish goals, even freakishly huge ones, you can't be afraid of looking (or feeling) stupid in going over the basic fundamentals.

And this is probably going to be the most important part of this year: you cannot be afraid to ask for help.

It's not my nature to ask for help.  Instead, I retreat into my own thoughts and do research.  But if I'm going to help 100,000 people, I am going to need the help of other people to get there.

Qigong Warm Up

As I grow to know whole routines, I hope Tai Chi can be grow to be more and more of a moving meditation.  Like most meditations in action, working toward precision has the important role of blocking out the outside world by giving something specific to focus on.  I don't have the skill for that at this point.

As of now, Tai Chi to me is all about having moves that feel good.  And that brings us to Qigong.  Apparently, Tai Chi is a branch of Taoist Qigong, making Qigong not only a larger universe in terms of Taoism, but also opening up other schools of Qigong, such as Buddhist and Confucian.

If all of that is too complicated,  just find some moves that feel good.  Here are some I like to do in the morning:

Tai Chi Notes #3 -- Some footwork fundamentals

Last night my wife went out to a movie with her friends.  This left me the house free -- and I finished the cleaning project, getting the dishes back up, the sink cleaned out and a few other pieces of space work.

I then read a bit, because I had tuckered myself out.  Then I worked through the footwork of the tai chi video I had bought (again, who can believe I bought something?)

On the first run through, my mind does not readily register a "twine step," or at least how it is not a "hook step."  I don't say this to say I am stupid, or that I will never understand this basic piece of footwork.  I'm just being honest about what happened on the first attempt.

I am fascinated by the process of taking something conscious, doing that conscious feedback and then working on it several times until it moves to the unconscious "muscle memory."

Twine step will in several practices be just another one of those pieces.  

Habits of 2015

• Practice Tai Chi upon waking.
• Write at least a sentence a day in a paper notebook.
• End "screen time" after 7:00.
• Write a weekly update of my garden/forage activities.

The Foundation: a Clean Space

Our house is now as clean as it has ever been since I've lived here.  We have a functioning office area.  The kitchen makes me happy, the coffee table -- for God's sake -- is clear!

We do have a spare room, that we call the "red room," which, along with the garage, are areas for us to sweep things under the rug, so to speak, but life is still so much better being able to walk through the house with out my eyes having to dart away from clutter here, clutter everywhere.

Investing time here should pay off during the school year.