Box-Checking
There’s a difference between doing a thing and doing a thing well.
“Well” measured against whatever it is you hope to achieve by performing a given activity.
There have been times, for instance, in which my daily meditation habit has shifted off-course and I’ve realized weeks later that even if I’ve technically been sitting down and spending the time on that activity each day, I haven’t been shifting my mind and attention the way I generally prefer when meditating.
I checked the box and technically, sort of, did the thing.
But I didn’t achieve the intended outcome of the thing.
I’ve caught myself doing this with many things over the years, and every time I realize what I’m doing—usually a fair spell after meandering off-course from my hoped-for destination—I’ve felt like a bit of a rube: tricked by my own lazy subconscious into feeling accomplished while mostly just performatively maintaining the habits I told myself I was benefitting from.
It could be argued that this isn’t always such a horrible thing.
Maybe a hollowed-out version of an activity is better than nothing, at times, because it serves as a placeholder for when we get around to bringing the real-deal endeavor back into proper practice.
For me, personally, this hasn’t tended to be the case: I almost always have to break the original habit in order to reintroduce it. The placeholder performance with its ersatz output keeps me from noticing that I’ve allowed it to shift off-course and become a hollowed-out version of what I perceive it to be.
That said, staying on top of everything all the time is not a practical or reasonable expectation with which to burden ourselves. Box-checking will tend to happen, even if we’re careful and conscientious.
Armed with this knowledge, it can be beneficial to periodically check in on the habits and routines and rituals we so assiduously maintain to ensure they’re doing what they’re meant to do; to confirm that they’re still oriented toward the outcomes we want to see, whatever those outcomes might be.
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Projects
Brain Lenses:Binary Bias & Lizardman’s Constant
Let’s Know Things:Delta Variant
Curiosity Weekly:July 20, 2021
One Sentence News: Info / Subscribe
Interesting & Useful
Some things to click:
100 Architecture Terms That Will Help You Describe Buildings Better(very much my type of article: educational and interesting)
Seeing How Much We Ate Over the Years(some data-visualizations of how the American diet has changed over time)
The Amateur Photographers of Midcentury São Paulo(beautiful, simple photography)
Soundcities(choose a city, listen to environmental sounds from that city)
Silver Linings(a photographic celebration of allowing one’s hair to go gray)
Pattern Generator(very simple pattern-making tool that’s fun to fiddle around with)
List of Common Misconceptions(as a policy, always check the links/sources on Wikipedia articles (it’s a better starting point than end point)—but that said, there are some really interesting and surprising bits on this list)
PS: if you like this sort of thing, subscribing to Curiosity Weekly (link in the previous section) nets you an email containing just curated links every Tuesday.
Outro
I’ll be rearranging some of my email-sending infrastructure this weekend, so there’s a chance that this (and a few of my other email missives) may look a tiny bit different next week: hopefully for the better. But also hopefully in a way that will help me manage things a little more efficiently.
I’m also laying the groundwork for the launch of a few new (to start) little projects in August, so fingers-crossed things keep going well on that front :)
Here in Milwaukee, I’ve got a manual clothes-washing thing arriving tomorrow: the ambition is to reduce my water and electricity usage while also gaining the ability to wash small loads more regularly (primarily workout clothes, which I’m going through fast now that I’m back to running on a daily basis).
There’s always the chance that these sorts of gizmos will end up being more ostensibly cool than truly practical, so we’ll see. In any event, I’m looking forward to trying it out and maybe streamlining that aspect of my lifestyle (and resource-usage) a bit.
Also: wherever you’re at in the world, please maintain a safe and socially prudent posture as pandemic-progress has absolutely been made, but we’re still a fair ways away from the end of all this—even if it sometimes seems otherwise.
What’s life like for you, at the moment? Any big changes since last year? Working on anything you’re particularly excited about? How’re you feeling, in general?
However you feeling, whatever you’re dealing with, if you’d like to share or vent or just say hello/introduce yourself to a stranger from the internet (who reads and responds to every email he receives)—you can reach me by replying to this newsletter or at colin@exilelifestyle.com.
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You can also communicate via the typical channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or the exact same creepy, Disney-like castle that everyone else in the neighborhood has.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become a patron / Buy a book / Buy me a coffee