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My “Real” News Cleanse
Recently I have started to look at things that I spend time on that don’t make me happy. The first thing I gravitated towards was social media. I recently wrote about that in my detox plan for it. The next thing that ended up on my very short list was the news.
Over the years I have written several times about my love hate relationship with the news. These two entries from August & September 2005 one from 2005. Another one from 2012. As a young kid I used to watch it and be fascinated by it. By my late 20s I was jaded by the 24-hour news cycle. I spent the better part of the last 20 years avoiding and then binging on the news. The only exception is tech news. I’ve been pretty consistently reading that. Tech news usually doesn’t depress me and it helps me stay current in my profession.
With all that’s going on in the world today I’m not getting very much positive out of reading the news every day. I have kept doing it because I want to stay informed. When I read several different sources talking about how I statistically would be happier not reading it I thought about ignorance is bliss. It is. In this case there’s really not much I can do when I read headlines. So what do I get out of it? I want to be informed however is being informed worth being miserable? I’ve tried being miserably informed for a while and it does not feel like working so I will try ignorant happiness.
Practically speaking when I have a coffee or eat lunch or commute I browse headlines via RSS feeds. I also read a few key websites. Even after curating down what sources I look at each day I am still depressed by what I read on general news sites.
The habit I plan to change is to stop looking at news sites altogether. As a start I will also cut out the vast majority of the RSS feeds I read. I will still look at some technology, productivity, mindfulness, and entertainment (Sci-Fi) sites. It’s hard to go cold turkey so I will keep looking at those since I find them interesting. The technology sites also help in staying current with the industry or so I keep telling myself.
I know that simply browsing articles even if they’re not stress inducing news articles is not good for me. I figure that what I proposed to do is a good transition. With the time I free up white like to spend it reading more books. I have a queue of them lined up. All I have to do is start reading them. The hardest part I think is building that new routine that doesn’t include looking at new sites & feeds. I almost by muscle memory will type in theguardian.co.uk when I have a spare minute. It is hard to stop myself. Instead I want to start taking spare time I have and use it to update my journal in Day One. Or something else more productive than reading news. Once I get started I hope to cut down on the other things I plan to keep reading at first. Over time I hope to transition those interests into books of the same topic instead of 2-5 minute articles.
As with my attempt to cut out social media or drastically reduce it only time will tell how successful I am. By the time this is posted I should hopefully have a routine down. Successful or not I hope to touch back on this topic in a few months to see how I did.
Boobytrapped
I should either feel that i have failed as a parent that my kids are boobytrapping the house, or i should be proud of their skills at home security. Who am I kidding I am so proud.
Going Sort of Cold Turkey on Social Media
For a while now I’ve been focused on personal productivity. I consider myself pretty organized already. I use personal kanban, organizing my thoughts in a database to track information. I have been trying to journal. Even with all that I have also been serious about how to continue to improve on my productivity. My dad always said work smarter not harder.
More recently over the past few months I have been reading a lot about mindfulness and ways to improve day-to-day happiness. It’s a fascinating topic. It is surprising that I have noticed several general themes overlapping between what I’ve read about improving personal productivity and mindfulness.
The first thing universally accepted as a big time suck is reading and participating in social media. It also shockingly turns out to be something that generally doesn’t make people happy. Yet many of us still do it. In early 2017 I cut out my social media consumption almost completely. That of course coincided with my not logging into Facebook for months. When I started posting pictures on Facebook again I inevitably logged in to see if there were comments. That coincided with my return to blogging so I would login to also check on comments to those posts as well. I am at a point now where I know I shouldn’t be logging in and I feel like I’m about ready to just stop cold. I’ll keep writing and posting on my blog but reading Facebook feeds needs to go.
I use Twitter as well. Presently I’ve been using it keep tabs on some financial technology companies I am interested in. As much is that is using social media I find that I’m giving myself an exception by continuing to read that. It helps me stay on top of technical trends and that in turn helps me stay ahead in my career.
When I think about it I really do not get much out of looking at social media. There is a conversation here there with friends near and far that I cherish. Those are few and far between compared to all of the nonsense and polarizing news articles littering the cesspool of my newsfeed. The idea of Facebook and Twitter is great. The in practice isn’t so much. Besides not being productive I really am not much happier by engaging in it all. It is hard to understand why I keep doing it then.
I have been thinking about this all for a while now. I am finally ready to action for myself. What I’m going to is simply stop. I am going to remove Facebook from my phone. I am not going to check my newsfeed. What I will keep doing is periodically checking some specific groups that are useful and that I contribute to. If I want to do that though I will need to do it from a computer. I will also continue to review a few specific Twitter lists I’ve curated for keeping up on technology. I plan on keeping Twitter on my phone for now. That’s it though. No trolling to see what others are doing. No commenting or replying to comments. And definitely no glancing at news articles or news headlines others garbage posts that litter my newsfeed.
What I hope to do instead is message friends more. I want to have direct conversations virtual or otherwise. At the time of this writing I hope to start this immediately.. By the time this gets published on my blog however it should be several weeks. Hopefully by then I will have been successful. I sure hope so.
In addition or along with this I have to address my news consumption. That’s the next habit I will write about Stay tuned, or not.
Finally Cooling Down
It was hot (hot for England) at like 27 Celsius today. That is like 80 something in that Fahrenheit system that I used in the US. After the kids were in bed M and i decided to go out to our garden and relax. It was nice i whipped up some cocktails and we read. It was a nice relaxing end to the week.As we were sipping our drinks it started to get windy and cool. We both looked at each other and said it might be time to go inside. Then i looked at my watch and realised it was 9:40 PM. It wasn’t daylight but it isn’t dark. I am still fascinated at how different enough the weather and day/night times are here than NY. By 9:40 PM in NY during any day of the year it would be dark and cold. Here it is light enough that you can still read and it is still cool but not cold outside.
4th of July BBQ London Style
M originally had plans for last night. She changed them / they got moved. That gave her an opportunity to BBQ. This was a first for her. We do not have a fancy BBQ grill however that didn’t stop my superstar M. For under £3 she picked up a one time use BBQ thing and grilled up hot dogs and hamburgers.
The girls had a play date and hung by the pool in the garden and then had BBQ. For desert M even had a red, white, & blue (strawberry, whipped cream, & blueberry) desert with ice cream. With the perfect weather this was an unexpected fantastic evening with the family. And if you look close enough you can see the Batman plate I used (thanks to A for liking DC comics)
I am glad that even with 30 minute delay on the Tube i was able to home just in time for the start of the grilling.
Independence Day or In England We Call It Wednesday
Happy Birthday America. Pictured in this post is me prior to moving to England. My brother in law bought me that shirt since he wanted me to remember the country I come from. At time of writing this post I am not sure if i am going to wear this shirt today. That is the plan however.
Now I need to find a good place for BBQ for lunch. I am pretty sure there will not be any fireworks for us today.
Underground vs Subway Showdown Part 2: Reliability
I am a tech guy so of course in part one of my Tube vs Subway showdown i was going to talk about Payment systems. In Part 2 I focus on reliability or how bad can a system get. Let’s find out.
The New York City subway is not what most people would call reliable. I remember countless mornings where I would take the local train after dropping the kids at school because the express train was taking as long or longer. On the local I would at least get a seat. Other times I would count 5 to 7 trains in one direction before the train I needed showed up. This was in Penn Station and not some remote location mind you. In many other cases sitting in a tunnel for 30 to 45 minutes with no explanation as to why. Then doing that again the next day. And again a few days later. This was a regular thing when living in Forest Hills. Hopefully for those not living in New York you get the point. The subway is slow, and prone to incidents. How can anyone explain to me why an express train regularly is slower or maybe equal to a local when the express skips 5 stops?
Besides the delays there was the construction. When I lived in Long Island city for 8 to 12 weeks of winter I wouldn’t have a train on the weekend direction. That might not fall under reliability category however it wasn’t available when I wanted it so….. I also know that the underground may be similar in that there are sections that get shutdown for construction. Thankfully for now i have not experienced this.
Local friends in London have said I should be wary of the underground with regards to service and reliability. We were looking for a house in November we had to radically change our plans to get to the airport because one of the underground lines was down. Besides that incident and a few other minor ones I have not had as many issues as in NY. I cannot stress enough how regular the issues were in NY. In London so far the train arrival time boards seem relatively accurate. I just don’t feel like I’m stuck in a tunnel as much on the underground.
One area unreliability that I do have an issue with the underground is strikes. For this arbitrary comparison i will put strikes in the reliability category. Twice so far I’ve been living here.DLR has not been running for a few days due to strikes. I’ve also experienced an underground strike when I was here for business a few years ago. I will say this that the strikes are relatively orderly. They are pretty frequent compared to the New York City subway. The subway on the other hand does not strike very often. When it does it’s terrible. You also don’t know when it will end.
Score another one for the underground. It’s just more reliable. This isn’t even a close one.
That is it for Part 2 of my Underground vs Subway showdown. In Part 3 I talk about all of you people when I complain, um I mean compare the crowds in each system.
Shared Goals Makes Everything Better
If I wrote a business book the title I think would be “Shared Goals Makes Everything Better” How to Reduce Friction and Get Things Done In Cross Functional Teams.
I came up with that while having a conversation with someone at work. I find it pretty funny because it could be (maybe should be) a real book. I do believe shared goals do make everything better.
Now all I need is some semi interesting buzz word jumbled together and I can be the next David Allen. One can dream.
Candy Floss, Seriously?
I have been trying to embracee the terms used in my new home. M sometimes makes fun of me because of it.
Sometimes you have to adapt. If i asked around for a bathroom people would likely not help because they dont know what i mean so I adapt and use Loo or Toilet. I keep remembering i need to call what i know as pants, trousers. if i call them pants people will think i am talking about what i know as underwear. so adapting is necessary a lot of times. When you start talking like that you continue to use the terms even at home or when you don’t need to. That is when i get the funny comments from M sometimes.
As we learn the right terms we also adapt. Many terms i knew already, like lift vs elivator or toilet vs bathroom. Others I didn’t know like popsicle vs lolly. Lolly makes sense to me so when M told me about it i was like ok, noted. Then there is the stuff that doesn’t make much sense to me.
M said that cotton candy is candy floss. I was like WTF? It didn’t make much sense to me. As of writing this it make a little more sense than when I originally heard it but still not much. I have a few other translations i noted I want to write about. This one however popped in my head when i had a few minutes to write.
Now I am off to get a chocolate Lolly and pondering how unhealthy candy floss is.