Weekly Shakedown - Issue #5 - On Being Uncomfortable
Hi friends
Happy weekend to you all.
It looks like we are experiencing the last bit of sunny weather before we move into autumn, so I’ll be trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible this weekend.
At this time of year I always start to get a feeling of malaise, or even dread, at the prospect of the colder seasons ahead. There’s nothing pleasant about waiting at a bus stop for the daily commute in the middle of winter when its close to freezing and raining.
That said, this year I’m going to try and do something about it. And here’s what…
I hope you enjoy.
Stay safe
G
Being less comfortable
Most of modern life is built around comfort and convenience. And that’s a good thing. It has created the platform for people to focus on higher purposes, like making important scientific / technological breakthroughs. It also just means that everyday life, for everyday people, is a whole lot easier.
But too much comfort is bad for our mental, physical and spiritual well-being (yes I know, that’s a really broad statement to make, but I don’t want to turn this into a thesis - so you’ll just have to take me at my word). To personally remedy this, I have made a commitment to myself to push against that prevailing paradigm; to seek out challenge and discomfort.
Seeking discomfort
I hate winter because of the cold. I feel it in my bones. But I think there’s a way to remedy that. I’m going to get used to the cold.
To achieve that goal, I need to expose myself to it. And to do that, I’ve made a commitment to have a 5 minute cold shower every day. I mentioned last week how much I love the shower - it’s the place I do my diffuse mode thinking. It isn’t going to be easy, but nothing worth doing is ever easily achieved.
Creating the habit
If I’m going to be able to achieve my goal, it is going to have to become an automatic process. A habit. So I’ll be using some of the strategies set out by James Clear in ’Atomic Habits’.
In brief, these are:
verbalise the habit - I’m doing that here;
habit stack - i.e. carry out the habit right after another habit. This one’s easy, every time I have a shower I’ll turn the water to cold for the last 5 minutes;
create a cue, routine, reward pattern - for me the cue is turning on the shower, the routine is having the cold shower and I reward myself by turning the water to scolding hot at the end of the 5 minutes (which feels really good);
make the habit obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying - I’m not going to have completely cold showers every day (that would quickly become too much), and it’s not a vague promise to expose myself to cold more . Instead I’ve set a specific goal that achieves incremental change, is achievable and moves me towards my end goal with purpose;
keep yourself accountable and be prepared to deal with the monotony - personally, I’ll do this by using a habit tracker (in Notion) to give myself the satisfaction of ticking off each day that I meet my goal - I’m my own accountability partner.
The outcome
By making small changes in my life which increase friction and discomfort I’m on the way to solving my problem. It will make me physically tougher, mentally stronger and will decrease the general malaise that I usually experience when the seasons start to turn.
There are hundreds of tiny improvements that I can make in my life to become a better person, this is just one of them. They all involve an element of strenuosity - of doing something uncomfortable, or difficult - the accumulated result of which far outweighs the effort required.
What actions can you take to address your own problems / achieve your goals? I bet they’re smaller than you might think.
What I've been watching this week
I’m probably a bit late to the party with this one, but I watched ’The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix this week - and it blew my mind. Without giving anything away, it’s a documentary-style interview with people who worked at large technology companies. In it, the interviewees talk about the ethical implications of the tools and platforms they helped to create. For anyone who feels like they use social media too much, for anyone trying to understand the implications of letting their kids watch YouTube Kids and for anyone who follows global politics, this show is for you.
Everyone must watch this.
@SocialDilemma_
@tristanharris
@netflix
https://t.co/NxDBlgjOcd
It’s gripping watching in much the same way that ’An Inconvenient Truth’ was all those years ago. I’ve been a social media sceptic for a long time, but this programme was, frankly, terrifying. Watch it!
By Gareth Malna
Productivity-related content, with the occasional bit of football-related paraphernalia thrown in for good measure.
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