There was a period, thankfully a brief one, when I was spending $100 a week on Kindle Books. I know, shocking. I was reading them too, mostly novels.
I’ve since started tracking my expenditure on books more – limiting myself to a $100 a month budget, which was helping me not purchase quite so many non-fiction books. I’d previously been buying them at about 2x the rate I was reading them, which after 3 years had added up to a 10-20 book backlog. This made me a bit more mindful, and I started using my wish list more, and only buying those non-fiction books I had an immediate need to read. This was also encouraging me to re-read novels I’d loved. It’s better to re-read a good book, than read a terrible new book.
And then I took some time off, went to Bali (where I had a pretty poor internet connection) and read… erm.. about 15 novels. In 10 days. And started having these weird ideas about moving to the countryside. I’d also spent so much time and energy consuming other people’s work, that I completely lacked creativity to create my own. And finally, I didn’t want to look back at my precious time off and say, well what did I do? I read a bunch of novels.
So with some encouragement from a friend (reaction: “You think about moving to the countryside? You ARE reading too many novels”) I decided to – quietly – ban myself from reading novels for the month. In the end, because I started on Australian time, I finished when November ended in Australia, not 11 hours later in Europe.
And it was not as hard as I thought it would be, despite the number of flights (including some long haul, and a lengthy wait in Bangkok) – easier I think because I had overdosed on novels already, and I was relaxed, and didn’t have as much need for my usual methods of “relaxing” – one of which is ingesting novels, whole. Often 2-3 over a weekend.
I watched a little more TV on my iPad, mostly on planes, but not that much more. I actually bought two magazines, which I really enjoyed and required less sneakiness during take-off and landing, although I think reading too many magazines has it’s own set of problems. I think I probably read slightly more online.
I did start to feel more creative, and I wrote a lot. And I read a lot of non-fiction, about 8 books over the course of the month. This made a significant dent in my backlog of non-fiction!
Overall, I found it really helpful. I would definitely do it again, although a couple of days before the end of the month I got excited and pre-emptively bought 7 new novels to read in December, so there was no danger of the experiment being extended!
Sometimes it’s easier to have a blanket ban than try and moderate. So if there’s something that is distracting and being done to excess, maybe a month off is the answer. It’s at most 31 days, so how bad can it be?
I’ve been wearing a Nike Fuelband (v1), when I’ve had a working one, for about the last 18 months. The Jawbone UP (also v1), again when I’ve had a working one, for about 6 (both links Amazon). Sometimes it’s been just the one, and sometimes I’ve had one on each wrist – makes wearing jewellery a little harder, but I don’t find either of them unattractive. This is my findings of the overall pros and cons.
Overall, I’ve found the Fuelband better for motivation, and the UP better for measurement (sleep tracking is the killer feature for me) however the durability problems of the UP have been approaching insurmountable for me, although I will cover some of the ways I’ve mitigated them.
Hands down, the Fuelband. I think the longest one of my UP’s has lived is around the 3 week mark, the shortest was the one that never even turned on after I got it home from the Apple store – vindicating my strategy of buying 2 at a time (my friend had one that lived longer, about 5 months I think, and my second one was also my ex’s, which survived a few weeks with him but then only 3 weeks with me). The typical problem I’ve had is power-supply issues, so the battery discharges, and won’t recharge, can’t be detected by the app etc.
By contrast, my first Fuelband lasted 6 months, with 4/5 of them lasting at least 3 months. The hypothesis has been raised by multiple people that mine last so little time because I move so much. I’ve convinced another hyperactive friend to get one, so that we can test that!
No reason to choose one over the other here. Technically, the UP is supposed to last about 10 days, I’ve normally found it lasts about a week – it depends on how much you move. The battery life on the Fuelband depends more on how much you press the button to light the display, once I got over my initial excitement I was getting about 5-6 days battery life from it. The Fuelband can be charged anywhere you have a USB port, which is handy, so it’s not something to plan around and I’m happy to charge it when I’m sleeping, or when I’m sitting still and coding. The UP is tricker, as it requires the USB-Audio Charger convert, and the sleep tracking (see below) means I need to charge it during the day. I have a spare charger though, so I just keep one at the office and one at home and that worked pretty well.
The UP also alerts you (on your phone) as to when your band is likely to need to be charged.
Motivation
Activity Tracking on the Nike Fuelband iOS App
Activity Tracking on the Jawbone UP iOS App
Me vs Females My Age on Nike Fuel
Definitely the Fuelband – you set your goal, and just tap the button ever so often to see how far you have got towards it! It definitely helped me up my activity level initially, although it has downsides too – I stopped swimming for a while as it wasn’t measured and didn’t count. I set myself a challenging target on my Fuelband, to encourage me to move through the day, and take a longer route home if I’m short of my goal. My goal is 4500 points – about double average for females my age, and I made a 50 day streak on it… and then my band broke. Gutting.
The UP has inactivity alerts, but I’ve never used them – I’m rarely still for more than an hour anyway, even in the office I find sitting on an exercise ball works well for not slumping at your desk. (My friend’s reaction to seeing my activity after we connected in the UP app “how do you write any code?”) I kept the UP on it’s default (10,000 steps – normally I hit around double that), I only sync once or twice a day (first thing in the morning, last thing at night) and so it doesn’t matter – it’s not going to change my activity level.
Day summary on the Nike Fuelband web appDay breakdown on the Nike Fuelband web app
Sleep Tracking
Sleep Tracking on the Jawbone UP iOS App
This is the only reason I persist with the UP after… I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had – pretty sure I’m in double figures. The sleep tracking and smart wakeup are AMAZING. I know there are other options, but I’m not going to use a mobile app as I do not take my phone to bed with me, and those have limited accuracy – especially if you sleep with another person. I feel so much better after a smart wakeup than being woken by an alarm, and I find the data really useful – sometimes I’ve slept all night but didn’t get much deep sleep, and so feel terrible. Other times I’ve not slept that much, but I’ve got enough deep sleep to cope. It’s often been a good explanation of “why do I inexplicably feel terrible today”, or “why do I feel so amazing even though I was out so late?”
Swimming / Cycling
Adding Cardio Workout (swimming) on the Jawbone UP iOS App
The UP is supposedly fine for swimming, although a number of mine seem to have died right after a dip in the pool. The Fuelband claims no such thing, and so I don’t swim with it on – annoying, but I’ve got over it not counting and go anyway. It does irk me when I just miss my goal and I know all my laps didn’t count though! Same for Spin class – 45 minutes of hard work and the walk to and from the gym scored more points! The nice thing about the UP is that you can log your workouts in the app, so however they affect your points, it still feels like they count! And it calculates calorie burn estimates too.
The App
Adding Weights Workout on the Jawbone UP iOS App
UP has a superior app, and actually has a close-to-fully-functional offline experience, and far, far better handling of timezones. By contrast, the Nike app barely works at all when there is no connection, something I find really annoying. The Fuelband only has an iOS app, but can sync to the web using the USB port on your computer.
UP has both Android and iOS, I think the iOS app is slightly better, but the Android one is pretty great too. It syncs by plugging into the headphone port, which is something I’ve absentmindedly done when on the phone (pro-tip: you can’t combine these two tasks), and it’s sometimes annoying that I have to stop listening to music to sync. You have to remove a little cap on the end, which made me a bit nervous as I’d heard they can get loose and fall off, however none of mine had (or, lived long enough to have) that problem.
The Fuelband syncs by Bluetooth, I found leaving Bluetooth on all day was a battery drain on my phone, so I just turn it on to sync and then turn it on again. This is now more convenient with the iOS 7 redesign – Bluetooth can be turned on and off from the view dragged up from the bottom of the screen, without having to go to Settings.
Error Messages
The Fuelband will give some selection of messages when plugged into the computer (those starting with 800 are a bad sign) and then declare itself necessary to be replaced. I only had one instance where that didn’t maintain – it gave the message once, but wouldn’t repro, just showed “connect me” whenever the button was pressed. This was super annoying when I went to return it, as it was out of charge completely after being out of use for months, and I had to go away, charge it up in a cafe, and return. After that, they exchanged it (I would have been less annoyed by this, if the guy in the shop had been less patronising about it).
I have never seen an error message from the UP. The app gives me some help options when it has trouble connecting but that’s it – there’s no means for the UP to display error messages itself, nor has connecting it to the phone ever shown me one. The main error of the UP though has been complete lack of response… There are two different ways to reset it – a hard, and a soft reset. Neither of these has ever resolved a failing UP band for me.
Return Policy
Both have great return policies, I swap any broken Fuelband’s I have each time I go to the US (I have two). The UP doesn’t live long enough for that to be a viable strategy for me, so I gave up after my first two died (one was lost on it’s way to them, the other they exchanged but wouldn’t mail to Australia so I gave to a friend) until they were available in Australia at the Apple Store – this has been great, they’ve swapped without question (well, other than “why are you still using this?), and even refunded me – I’ll buy new ones once I’m based in the UK and can return them there. Although maybe I will try a Misfit Wearable instead.
Appearance
The way the Fuelband can be used as a watch is surprisingly handy – it was one of the things I missed most about it when I was waiting for my last round of replacements.
My friend lost an UP he was supposed to be replacing for me, claiming that the cleaner must have “thought it was a useless piece of plastic, which it is” and thrown it out – I can see that it might look that way, when not on your wrist. The Fuelband feels sturdier, and looks more purposeful… even when broken.
I like the black of both, Nike black translucent and UP Onyx are my preferred colours. As a sizing reference – I wear a small Fuelband, and can wear a small or medium UP, but prefer medium, as there is no need for it to fit as tightly to your wrist.
Overall
If you’re hoping to increase your activity level, get the Fuelband. If you’re more interested in sleep tracking, and have a convenient way to exchange UP bands when they break, try that. (Both links Amazon).
Rise (Amazon) is focused on helping you become CEO. As a result I found some of it a bit overly-ambitious for me. But – it contained some really great advice.
1. Ruthless Priorities. You have too much to do, but hey – don’t we all. The trick is to decide what’s critical and do an outstanding job on that, rather than a mediocre job on everything. It’s important to pick the right things to prioritize ruthlessly – the things that make a huge difference.
2. Work smarter, not longer. If your answer is to throw hours at everything, you’ll never scale up.
3. Mentors. This was probably the biggest insight I got from the book, and it made me think “I’ve been doing all these things that will benefit other people, but when did I last make time and prioritize someone mentoring me?” – it motivated me to set a time with one of my mentors and after a fabulous evening of delicious food and horizon-expanding conversation, I left with some key ideas and a contact that will help me move things forward, but more importantly – feeling inspired and energized and ready to go!
Overall, a useful read if you want some strategies and reminders for moving forward on your personal development and crazy goals.
My friend AY and I were out for dinner, and we got to talking about authenticity, and correspondingly, inauthenticity. It was interesting, because we were talking about how everyone seems to see through people who are fake, and how it ultimately comes back to bite you.
A while ago, I subscribed to this blog, about, being awesome and getting stuff done – personal productivity, you know the type. After a while, I unsubscribed because I was bored by it and found it fake. A while later, the guy pops back up on Twitter with a new blog admitting that he hadn’t believed what he was writing himself (and a fresh start, focusing on stuff he did know). I thought I was just being a grouch – I unsubscribed from a number of such blogs.
I admire AY because she is very authentic. Sometimes too fixated on the future, but always terrifyingly, exhaustingly, authentically, herself. I try and surround myself with people who are authentic because few things bother me more than someone having dubious motivations. It bothers me more when someone conceals than when they outright lie. I’m not entirely sure why this is.
Anyway, it made me think about the first KW Awesome Foundation grant. How we had all these ideas of what we would value, but what struck me – and I think others – about the guy that we ended up funding was that he was so authentic. He had the purest motivations, and they shone through when he spoke.
I’ve been struggling to write something lately, and terrified by my upcoming Ignite talk. But it occurs to me, that what I find most powerful in others is being real, authentic, true. Perhaps that is the best thing I can do myself. Wish me luck!
The premise of Drive is that “if-then” rewards don’t motivate us, and actually what people need are three things – Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I.e. you want a higher reason for doing what you’re doing, be working towards mastery in the process, and have as much control as possible about when/where/how you do that.
The cover of Drive says “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, but there wasn’t much that was shocking to me. Perhaps that’s because I’m a programmer – one profession where managers have already embraced “Motivation 3.0” (Google is held up as a shining example, IBM definitely gave EB interns a lot of autonomy).
Pink does a good job of organizing the research around motivation, particularly I’m interested by Carol Dweck’s work on having a “growth” rather than a “fixed” mentality. With a fixed mentality, everything you achieve (or don’t achieve) is a commentary on your innate abilities. With a growth mentality, everything is a learning process.
The pursuit of flow (coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and the idea of “Goldilocks tasks” (tasks that are neither too difficult nor to easy – key to achieving the state flow) are interesting.
My favorite concept is the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation means being motivated by external factors – like job title, or money. Intrinsic motivation comes from within – from enjoyment in the task, or working towards a higher purpose. People who are intrinsically motivated tend to perform better.
In all, worth a read, but I think you can get the majority of the value from the book out of Pink’s TED talk (embedded below). But before you watch it – take the survey and determine whether you’re “Type I” or “Type X”.
This book appealed to me at the moment because I’m feeling low on motivation with my thesis. Having read it, I’m not any more motivated, but I do have a better idea as to why – and as a result what I can do to improve things.
I feel like what I do lacks purpose. I’m increasingly demoralized that academia is not a place that values what I find interesting. It’s started to make me question the point of what I do. The thesis is a big, intimidating thing that is freaking me out. I need to break it down into smaller subtasks that are more “Goldilocks” in nature.
Want my copy of Drive? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter (@catehstn) and I’ll pick a winner at random and post it to you! H/T to the lovely Julie for this idea!
At Ignite Waterloo a guy gave a talk about “Why All My Ex-Girlfriends Are Crazy”. Of course, I was dying to know why.
The reason? They were women who having achieved at university and then started their career had got to a point in their lives where they no longer had the same level of stress professionally, so were creating it in other areas of their lives. Really, what the talk was about was that we all have a level of stress that we like to operate at and we seek out new stress if we are at a level that is too low.
This resonated with me, to the point that when I went to the chiropractor the following week and they asked what my stress level was I said,
High. And that’s how I like it.
Cue two people looking at me in absolute horror!
However, it’s completely true! Knowing this, I can be more aware of where I am creating stress and try and do so productively – i.e create stress in ways that does not negatively affect others (e.g. not by arguing with my significant other, but by taking on some new challenge instead).
Because of this search for stress, I’m always looking for the next challenge, the next thing. When things seem too good (by which I mean, quiet, post-achievement) I worry that everything will come crashing down. Maybe that’s why I focus on what’s next, rather than what is.
Sacha wrote a lovely post after our conversation last week about feeling like you’re living in a Greek tragedy – that things are too good and everything is going to fall apart. She is an inspiration because she thinks that things can just get awesomer and awesomer. She’s is a genuinely happy person.
I am not. At the moment I am – optimistic, productive, energized – about what I’m doing.
I wouldn’t describe myself as happy. I have happy moments, but I don’t know if I want to be happy in general. In fact, I worry that would kill my drive. Recently I wrote about how I’d prioritized an interesting over a happy life, and I still do. I think I fear an awesome life, because I worry that I would become complacent. Content. I’d stop jittering from task to task, inspiration to inspiration, and just be.
Oh the horror.
I realize that this may sound ridiculous. But I regularly have conversations with people where they say, “Cate, you do so much” and I look at them in blank bewilderment because compared to what I want to be achieving, what I think I should be doing. What I do barely registers. Because I’m always pushing forward to the next new exciting thing, the next challenge I rarely stop and take stock of what I’ve actually done.
So I fear being happy because I fear being in this moment rather than chasing the next moment.
Yes, OK, bizarre – but it seems to be what works for me.
Optimistic. Productive. Energized. Sounds about optimal.
On Wednesday, uOttawa WISE had the latest talks in our Inspiring Women series. As has happened every time so far, I think this is the best yet. How do we top it in February? (OK I have a sneak preview of what will be happening in February, and that’s going to be awesome too).
Our speakers were: Dr. Jennifer Decker, Team Leader, Metrology for Nanotechnology, Institute for National Measurement Standards, National Research Council Canada; and Mrs. Stephanie De Silva, Head, Monograph Management Unit, Natural Health Products Directorate, Health Canada.
I didn’t make notes about specifics, so I’m just going to write a little about the different themes it pulls out for me.
First up, I was struck by the similarities in what these two women spoke about, despite the disparity in their career paths and ages. We think we’re unique, that our problems are special in some way, but they’re not. We all have similar things that arise, we just deal with them differently. We all struggle to find balance, but being imbalanced is okay – if we manage our imbalances. I.e. unbalanced weeks are okay, but we can aim for our overall life to be in balance.
Second, I was reminded of Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women”, which I blogged about the other day. Both of them had been persistent in getting the job they wanted – without being pushy. If you want to work in the government, calling regularly to say, “so, how’s my application going?” is likely a good idea.
This is something I struggle with, and it was a reality check for me. I released on Monday but I’m not sure some people who I wanted to notice had (it’s hard to pick out one tweet in a stream if you follow a lot of people). And I knew I should message them and say, “hey, thought you’d like to know I released this” but I was prevaricating because maybe they noticed and weren’t that interested.
Seriously, I was holding off letting people know who had already expressed an interest in my work, that I had released something new. OK, I don’t want to be a jerk but this is likely going to far the other way! And isn’t it more arrogant to think they would just notice? People are busy, I’m just one person in a stream of information. Saying, hi and letting them know is not such a big deal! So I pulled myself together and put it out there. I’ll probably do it a couple of people at a time.
(As I write this, I’ve contacted two people. One of them replied within an hour suggesting we connect via phone next week. Seriously – why was I prevaricating?)
Third was asking for help. Stephanie has a young family, and wasn’t ashamed to say that being a working mom was made possible by the help of her friends and family and the support of her husband. This was echoed by Dr. Decker. I think we can be reluctant to ask for help because we think we should know, but none of us is superwoman! The most effective people I know don’t mind asking for help, and do it with regularity. There’s nothing less effective than spending hours struggling with something that someone else could take 5 minutes to set you on the right track with, really, is there?
So Thursday morning I took the thing I’d been struggling to write for nearly a week now and emailed the guy who asked me to do it. Because I’m angsting that I’m on the wrong track. And he can just tell me, and probably make some really helpful suggestions. Of course he was nice about it, and arranged to meet me later the same day.
The fourth, and final aspect, was failure. Some people get seized up by failure, and waste their time berating themselves about it. But if you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself. So fail, dust yourself off, and try again.
Last week, and at the start of this week I was feeling really worn out and disillusioned. Things were taking longer than they should, and despite working a lot and effectively I really wasn’t making the progress I wanted to be. I felt like I wasn’t achieving anything. What this really means, is that on Monday I worked from around 8 in the morning to 11pm at night (- perhaps 2 hours) and yet didn’t cross anything off The List. Tuesday I started a little later, but ultimately didn’t cross anything off the list either. Or Wednesday.
I feel this real need to make progress, achieve something concrete, day in, day out. I’m aware that as a grad student there’s a risk of ending up at this place where you show up but nothing concrete happens, and this continues until you’ve been there for several years and people joke about whether you’re ever going to graduate.
I don’t want to be that person.
My far off goal, is finishing my thesis. It’s impossibly far away, and too large to conceptualize, so I have to break it into smaller, manageable tasks that mean I’ll make it, in increments. Like reading a paper a day. Coding a new visualization. Writing up all the papers I’ve read that are covered in notes into my work-in-progress. But then sometimes I end up spending a week on stuff that doesn’t help achieve these goals – like marking, or a ridiculously large assignment for the course I have to take. And then at the end of the week I look back and think, well I worked really hard, and I got this done, but in a months time (or even just another week) will anyone care? Will I care?
It’s frustrating. And so every day, I set myself an unrealistic list of tasks. If something (for example, the presentation we made this week) takes longer than expected and I don’t achieve them, the following day’s list is even more unmanageable. And it continues. This is why the “Week in Brief” and my “Goals” list are so helpful, because when I’m trying to do 10+ high level tasks in a week I have to give myself a reality check and admit, that’s never going to happen.
Setting goals that push me but don’t overwhelm me is something I’m working on. Because when I’m overwhelmed I’m not effective, I’m just overwhelmed. I’m not getting stuff done, I’m not motivated, I’m contemplating hiding from the world and wondering if everything would be OK if there were just 30 hours in the day. Panicking because I think I’ve missed an important appointment when I’ve in fact just misread my calendar.
The irony here? After all that stressing at the start of the week, there’s a chance I might just cross everything off the list this week.
Lesson? Start big tasks at the start of the week. Postpone smaller ones to the end of the week. Achieving large tasks motivates and inspires me to achieve the smaller ones. Vice versa does not work so well. Spend more time doing and less time scheduling.
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