Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Stand up to live, sit down to earn a living

From A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I only say this because part of the reason my life had become uninspiring is I’d sat down to earn a living. Literally, I sat in a chair and typed words. And that’s fine, because I like the work, and it pays the rent. But Jordan was right: my life was a blank page, and all I was putting on the page were words. I didn’t want to live in words anymore; I wanted to live in sweat and pain.

I keep getting stuck staring at glass. I should be walking around exploring New York but sometimes it becomes more tempting to sit down and write about walking around exploring New York.

Gotta find some kind of balance. Especially because this writing isn’t the writing that actually pays my rent.

In any case, I’ve been enjoying listening to A Million Miles in a Thousand Years while walking around New York.

I’m glad I’ve had some interest in food, because it does become a reason to head out to different parts of the city. It’d be GREAT if new delicious food was disconnected from physical health.

In any case, the sweat and pain for me tonight will be from overeating Minetta Tavern’s cote de beouf.

Which I need to include in the “7 life lessons from steak” post. An idea that keeps coming back to me every time I have a significant steak.

Jotting some quick steak ideas down:

  • Sous vide making years of practice obsolete: I used to be proud to be able to cook a good steak. Now anyone can cook a perfect steak every time for only like $99. In a somewhat random connection, this reminds me of Tiago Forte talking about how he used to be an expert in organizing his mp3s in iTunes. He put dozens of hours of his time into his collection. Eventually Apple released music match and all that work was obsolete.
  • The people matter more than the steak: When I think back to any memorable steaks, I picture the people there. Then I just assume it was a rib eye or porterhouse. Because that detail doesn’t matter as much as who I was having it with.
  • Good marbling over giant pieces of fat: Though I do love a nice crisped up piece of fat, pricier steaks are just that because of good marbling through the muscle. It makes the entire steak better. There’s something about consistency over intensity here.
  • The IKEA effect and cooking a steak from a cow you’ve murdered and butchered on your own: I’ll send an email to Zuck to see if he’ll guest write this section.

Okay time to stand up, step away from the glass, and live.

Road to 159: Week 7 of 8 — Pre-packaged

Alright so it seems like I’m making some progress just when I’m about to hit a couple weeks of travel + celebrations.

What went well: Costco runs for pre-packaged salads and chicken

The other week at Trader Joe’s, I threw one of those plastic bags of individually wrapped chicken breasts into the cart. During the week, I noticed I’d actually gravitate toward them when looking for a snack. Tasty, juicy.

This was nearly the exact opposite of when I would meal prep like 17 pounds of chicken breast and do anything not to eat it during the week.

So I turned that up and picked up a bunch of a similar product at Costco: snack packs of sliced chicken breast.

It feels more wasteful environment-wise since it’s using a bunch of plastic. Money-wise I haven’t done the calculation but it’s surely way more expensive.

It feels less wasteful food-waste-wise because I actually eat all of it, compared to meal prepping a bunch and not finishing it all. 

Other positives:

  • Tastes great, very filling
  • Idiot-proof way to add protein to a meal
  • Super easy to track since it’s pre-portioned

Then I did the same with some pre-packed caesar salads. Similar pros/cons.

But it seems to be working. This past week was the most effective in both workouts and eating.

Convenience over everything.

What can be improved: Just need to prep for the upcoming trip

I’m not a CEO, but I’ve been listening to Dan Go’s podcast lately. On an episode of his High Performance Founder podcast (The Unique Way We Train CEO’s to Their Best Shape), one of the key things he mentions:

  • Focusing on travel and events: 50% of fitness and nutrition damage happens during travel and events. Making sure to have a plan for it is key to success.

Travel makes it harder to work out and social events make it really easy to say “What the hell” and just indulge.

(Note to self: Write a post about good “What the hell” vs. bad “What the hell”)

Which is definitely going to happen to me if I don’t plan for it. Next two weeks:

Travel to NYC and Montana for these events:

  • My birthday
  • Wife’s birthday
  • Wife’s cousin’s wedding 
  • Cousin’s wedding

It’s going to be great! And tempting. And I do actually think some portion of “ah, what the hell” is valid when on vacation. You need to live life. But living life is that first slice of Prince St. Pizza, not the third $1 slice.

Experiment to continue: tracking food in MyFitnessPal

This is working well. I’ve been tracking. The barcode scanner works really well. And also it’s one of those things with the app where it’s tedious but once you start using it frequently and eat sort of the same things, it’s much less tedious.

BJ Fogg has something about this in Tiny Habits where often times there’s a lot of room to grow in ability so that the difficulty lowers.

Cool video: Korean backdash

Really enjoyed this Core-A Gaming video about the Korean backdash.

  • If you’re at all knowledgeable about Tekken, the backdash is obvious. I’m guessing. I’m not at all knowledgeable about Tekken, so even the mechanic explanation was fascinating. It’s an example of something that’s obvious to some people is valuable to others.
  • Great connection to basketball. I’ve followed basketball casually for decades and never knew the history of the dribble and the organizations opposed to it. It was a nice connection about how games can evolve beyond what the creators expected.
  • Mutalisk micro. There’s a history video about the making of Starcraft and the developers mention visiting Korea after it blew up in cafes and was televised. They were seeing things they didn’t know were possible even though they made the game.
  • Balduvian Horde vs. Force of Will. Alliances was the last Magic: The Gathering set I was really interested in during my first stint before playing again like 15 years later. Balduvian Horde was the hot card in the set initially and became worthless. Then Force of Will evolved to be a key card in prominent decks and is by far the most valuable in the set.

Games evolve for different reasons.

Daily content habits (that I’ll probably regret not building)

Good things would happen if I did one of these 3 things daily. And yet, I’ll do a bunch of other stuff and flail instead of doing one of these things.

  • Listen to a podcast and take notes for sharing afterward: This would take 30 minutes. Or I could even cap it at 30 minutes. At 1.5X that’d be 45 minutes (math mastery, i know) of ideas.
  • Grab 3 book quotes and share them + some thoughts: Again, this is something like 10 minutes grabbing quotes + 20 minutes writing thoughts.
  • Chop a published blog post into a thread + add a few sketches and photos: A third time, something I can definitely do in 30 minutes.

Can’t wait to scroll on Twitter here and there for a collective 90 minutes tomorrow.

Podcast idea: Two minds – Anthony de Mello + that Cracked article

The books don’t lie. I could kind of guess what some of my desires were 17 years ago when I took this photo of books from the library. But the books capture it. I wanted to be jacked, tan, and to have a sweet sweet jumper. Since then, I’ve achieved tan on and off with incredible consistency year over year.

Okay just writing this out here to make it a little more permanent. Otherwise I do think this idea would just get lost in my stack of notes.

There’s the whole “hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time” thing. I really enjoy both Anthony de Mello (mostly about loving yourself and others) and an older Cracked article I read recently: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person (mostly about how the world doesn’t love you).

My hunch, and something I’ll need to dig into when lurking further, is that they’re actually not that opposed to each other. The world doesn’t care about you, which is why it’s so important to learn to love yourself and what you currently have.

For now I’ll just cherry pick a couple quotes before heading off to bed.

A harsh truth: what you do matters a lot more than to the world than who you think you are inside.

Let’s say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, “Step aside.” He looks over your loved one’s bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife — he’s going to operate right there in the street.

The guy can be a vile person 99% of the time but if he happens to know how to and does save your loved one, that 1% is all that matters.

What you do is who you are.

And now one from Anthony de Mello. From Stop Fixing Yourself:

The villager took the diamond and went to sit under a tree on the outskirts of the village. He held the diamond close to his heart, and he experienced great joy. Now, this is the kind of joy most people feel the day they get something they really want. Have you ever stopped to ask how long that kind of joy lasts? You got the girl you wanted, right? You got the boy you wanted. You got that car. You got the degree. You were at the top of your class. You got what you thought was your dream job, right? How long does that joy last? How many seconds? How many minutes?

One of the happiest moments of my life was getting the Newegg packages for all the parts for the first PC I built the summer before heading to college.

Higher FPS, taken for granted so quickly.

Okay off to bed. I’ll do this as a Notepod episode sometime.