Small Refinements to Mundane Things
Current location:
Racine/Kenosha, WI, USA
Reading:
Revelations in Air
by Jude Stewart
Listening:
Inside (Deluxe)
by Mother Mother
(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status)
Small Refinements to Mundane Things
Most mornings, I make and drink two small mugfuls of black coffee.
After trying dozens of different coffee-prep approaches, I landed on hand-grinding beans and steeping them in an inverted Aeropress as my preferred method.
This routine of placing the beans in the grinder, turning the crank until they're sufficiently pulverized, placing them in the Aeropress, heating up the water, steeping the coffee, and then filtering it into a mug is something I do twice a day, every day.
It's one part of a larger bundle of routines that make up my mornings at the moment, and my enjoyment of it—of the coffee, but also the other routines connected to the making and consumption of said coffee—has increased since I started doing things this way.
Making coffee is a mundane, at times boring task. It fades into the background: you probably don't tell someone about how you made coffee that morning if they ask about your day.
But doing something twice a day means you do it more than 700 times a year, and in that repetition is an opportunity to achieve higher-than-you-might-expect gains from small refinements.
Tiny yields on humble investments can provide outsized returns if those yields are realized frequently enough over time.
I try to remind myself of this when I catch myself performing a habit thoughtlessly rather than intentionally.
I ask myself why I do it this way rather than some other way, if I might glean more from each motion or from the larger sequence of steps if I were to change something.
Maybe I should do away with the habit entirely? Sometimes uprooting a habit is the best way to deal with it, as that frees up your time and energy (even if only tiny bits of both) to be spent on something more purposeful.
Experimentation is also an important component of this thought process.
I arrived at my current coffee-making routine by trying out a bunch of other options, and I still experiment on a semi-regular basis to see if an even better option (for who I am now and what I currently want out of my mornings) exists.
I try to think of habits and routines and rituals as being infinitely malleable, lest they harden into constraints that keep me from growing and discovering ever-better (or better for a future version of myself) options.
In between tweaks and iterations, though, I remind myself to enjoy the incredibly minor, barely noticeable, mundane to the point where it seems silly to even think about it, more-optimal-than-before routines that help shape my day.
If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee :)
——
——
Projects
Select, recent works from across my project portfolio.
Aspiring Generalist: Software Agents
Brain Lenses: McNamara Fallacy
I Will Read To You: Oh Stay At Home, My Lad, and Plough
Let’s Know Things: Nuclear Fusion
Curiosity Weekly: Feb 8, 2022
Curiosity Daily: Feb 7, 2022
One Sentence News: Feb 9, 2022 (podcast version)
——
Interesting & Useful
Women's Pockets Are Inferior If you wear women's clothes, you already know this. But now we've got the data to show it.
I Actually Bought a Cheap Electric Pickup Truck from Alibaba, Here's What Showed Up
I found a $2,000 electric truck that looked perfect, except that it was about 2:3 scale. And it only went 25 mph. And only had a 3 kW motor. And you had to pay extra for batteries, shipping, etc.
Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode Character You Want
You need to find a specific Unicode character? With Shapecatcher.com you can search through a database of characters by simply drawing your character into a box.
——
——
Outro
I feel like this is something I should have known already, but apparently if you leave your car parked in very cold temperatures for long periods without driving it, you can kill the 12v starter battery.
That said, it's been very cold in Milwaukee, I don't drive when I can avoid it (when I'm not on a road trip), and I now have a new 12v in my little, old Prius.
I'm a bit peeved that it seems like I'll have to drive the thing on a regular basis (at least during the winter months) just to keep it from dying, and I'm ideologically opposed to the idea of just driving in circles to keep the car's battery happy, but fortunately this revelation lines up with my ambition to get back into a routine of regular visits to museums and other explorable sites.
Thus!
By the time you receive this I should be on my way to some of the smaller towns south of Milwaukee (Racine, Kenosha, maybe others). I'm intending to check out the beach (it's a tiny bit warmer than freezing so I probably won't stay there too long) and then hit an art museum, maybe a lighthouse—we'll see how it goes and what's open.
However the itinerary shakes out, this wee-trip should serve as perambulatory maintenance for my car's battery while also helping me get a better sense of an area that I've barely seen anything of, thus far.
—
How's your February going? Any big plans on the horizon? Working on anything you're excited about? Struggling through anything at the moment? Have small-town Wisconsin recommendations for me?
Tell me what's up and/or just say hello by replying to this newsletter or writing to colin@exilelifestyle.com. I respond to every email I receive and would love to hear from you :)
You can also communicate via the usual methods: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or longest-possible Doge.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work: Become an Understandary member / Buy me a coffee (or: Buy me a monthly coffee)