Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

And now to take a bajillion dog photos (buying an X100V)

Okay just a quick note on things as a bit of a decision log. I bought a Fuji X100V.

Why did you buy an X100V?

One of the reasons: I saw this video from Henny and his love affair with the X100V. I also have the original X100 and a Sony a6400 so I sort of know the combo.

Mostly I want to take more photos of Booster the dog.

Don’t you have a Sony camera?

Yes, but it does lead to “which lens should I bring” which is just enough friction to not bring anything at all. Or to create just enough friction (“one sec just let me change lenses”) or FOMO (“oh dangit should’ve brought that other lens…”) to affect whatever experience I’m supposed to be present at.

(Yes, there’s probably going to be some cases where I bring the X100V and think “Oh I should’ve brought the whole setup…”)

Oh yah I made this short unboxing video

It goes over some of the thinking in buying it. And I also talk about the Amazon Warehouse deal I stumbled on. (Summary: no original box, $400 off.)

Eventually I learned how to check the shot count and it had 500 shots on it. Not bad at all for a camera but not completely brand new.

I pictured someone opening it, trying to zoom with it or remove the lens or otherwise realize it’s not what they thought and then returned it.

Not the case.

What else are you comparing it to?

Okay as mentioned I have a Sony a6400 with a few different lenses (usually have the Sigma 16mm f1.4 on it) and the original Fuji X100.

I use a DJI Osmo Pocket. Or I own it and don’t use it enough is more accurate.

And an iPhone 11 Pro. And I’m in the Ken Rockwell camp of: the iPhone is very good in many situations. (Example: his X100V review section on its video opens with just use your iPhone.)

Impressions after a couple days?

  • Really like the tap to focus and automatically shoot. I also learned about it only through watching a video on like “how I set up my x100v” which brings me to…
  • … these video tutorials are great. The camera came with a manual that’s like 200 pages. From my first x100 I learned about a couple new buttons after months of use. I figured it’d be about the same for this one so I tried to shorten that gap with the videos.
  • Loving the close focus. The original X100 had a macro mode that took a couple button presses to turn on. Then I’d need to remember to turn it off. I do end up taking a bunch of close up shots (food, desk, yes I know…) so I’m loving it already.

A note on my experience with photography

Every New Year’s Day I start with a resolution to get back into photography. It’s very much in the vein of “look at what you were interested in growing up and see if anything is worth revisiting”.

My first blog, which I do think was on WordPress 1.0 or 1.1, was a photography blog. I had the original Canon Digital Rebel and the Nikon D90, the first digital SLR with video. (Which I wish I used way more. There’s a pattern.)

So I’m convinced I’d enjoy photography again. Get excited, then stop a couple weeks in.

This is the first time it’s hit me in the middle of the year. So we’ll see if it sticks.

Basically: I spend too much time in front of a computer.

If taking photos helps get me out of the house then I’m all for it.

So that’s why I bought a Fuji X100V.

Road to 159: Week 1 of 9

Okay this used to be “of 17” but somehow the last two months disappeared and I’ve made no progress.

A quick story about lying to myself on the basketball court. If I short around before pick up games and miss a bunch, I’ll joke to myself that it’s just getting those misses out of my system.

Good sign because all that will be left is makes.

Here’s how it can relate to losing the last 8 weeks of progress. Maybe it was inevitable that I needed 8 weeks of struggle first. So the next 9 weeks will be super productive.

All makes.

So every Sunday I’ll write a retro. The fat loss retrospective.

What went well?

I was fairly consistent with workouts. I did program hop BUT I did the workouts so that’s good. I’m going to do what worked in the past for me: reverse pyramid strength sets 3 days a week.

The plug-ins (a greyskull LP phrase) I’ll use will be Pavel’s fighter’s pull-up program. This worked for me before.

And lots of walking. I’ll aim for a 1 hour walk with Booster in the morning. Which is more like 30 minutes of movement and 30 minutes struggling to get her to move with me.

So heavy sets and some body weight on off days to keep moving.

What can be improved?

Okay so social eating on the weekend basically resets all progress (and more). I can see it coming and somewhat starve myself, which of course is probably not the best mentality.

Quantity might be the more important thing to handle. 2 drinks instead of 4, one slice instead of two, etc.

What content was helpful this week?

I was reading a kettlebell instructor’s reflections on year maybe 30 of his life. Or maybe it was 35. Anyway. He just used the language “eat like an adult”. Which is great. Language matters, especially in self talk.

In “Organize Tomorrow Today”, the authors use the phrase “fight-thru”. You’ll find some “fight-thru” moments in each day and you just need to win more and more of these and you’ll have more successful days than not. And you’ll make progress.

In most games, there’s usually a few key moments rather than every moment being equal. A few key points allowed Djokovic to rally back and win the French Open final.

He won some fight thrus. There will be some fight thru moments in the week and I’ll just need to win them.

By, you know, not eating whatever delicious thing it is.

What will you try next week?

I’ve been slowly moving more of my writing to Drafts and getting back in the groove of writing on my phone. So that I can write on the treadmill or the bike.

I’ll just keep trying to increase the amount that I do this and get to where I can publish more on my phone. Double whammy.

Makes low slow cardio go super fast and it just feels like walking + writing (or reading) together is one of the absolute best uses of time in terms of long term, positive compounding effects.

Fit body, learning mind.

Some daily writers on writing daily

Just wanted to grab a few quotes from some daily bloggers about blogging daily. Because I do want to get back to the more casual form of daily blogging. Share a link, share a book quote, share some thoughts. Multiple posts on some days.

That seemed like a more fun internet.

It seems pretty straightforward for my own goals of learning stuff. I read at least a little bit every day so I should be able to share something I learned every day. If I don’t, then I wasn’t reading closely enough.

Neel Nanda on a daily blogging experiment and how to approach it if you’re planning something similar:

And finally, remember, humans systematically suck at making plans. The default state of the world is that you’ll forget about this idea. If you have felt excited about the idea of daily blogging, and want to try writing something every day for the next week, look past that enthusiasm. Imagine yourself a week from now, feeling guilty because you totally forgot about all of these ambitions. Are you surprised by this? What went wrong? And what can you do about it right now to prevent that failure mode coming to pass?

Tyler Cowen talked about writing daily on the Tim Ferriss podcast:

Tyler Cowen: It is daily in an almost religious manner. I write on Christmas Day, I write on Sundays, I write columns, blog posts. I like to quit writing before I get tired of writing. That way I’m hungry to come back the day after. And the real enemy in writing is days where you get nothing written. If you write something every day, I don’t care how much or how little it is, it’s going to add up. And over time, you’ll get more done each day. So just make it an absolute rule. The really important thing, it may not be writing for everyone, but just do it every day, get better at it every day. Don’t take any excuses. Do it.

Cowen also talks about wanting something sort of normal (writing online full time) that wasn’t really the norm when he started:

Tyler Cowen: In retrospect, it doesn’t sound that scary. I started blogging I think, 17 years ago. And the notion that I would do this every day for what is now almost 17 years at the time was extremely weird. And I was doing well in my other endeavors. It wasn’t, there was some kind of failure that needed to be patched up. But I just thought, I’m going to do this. I’m not going to look back. At first, no one paid any attention for years. I just kept on doubling down happily in my oblivious fog, and it worked out great.

Gretchen Rubin suggests getting things started with a blast start. From Better Than Before:

Three times, I’ve set aside a few days to work on a book during every waking hour, with breaks only for meals and for exercise. These periods of intensity help fuel my daily writing habit. However, a Blast Start is, by definition, unsustainable over the long term. It’s very important to plan specifically how to shift from the intensity of the Blast Start into the habit that will continue indefinitely.

Maybe I won’t blog daily forever, but it’s something I’m excited to do for… at least the next few days.

What are you wearing? (Reading Log: “Wanting” by Luke Burgis)

Check out the full notes for “Wanting” by Luke Burgis

Wrote this thread about a short exercise for anyone to start thinking about mimetic desire.

Some additional notes, just going through each of the items in the sketch.

  • A Visualize Value hat — Bought this because I needed a hat and also just like Jack Butcher’s work and the community he’s built. And there’s some connection here to the book itself because Jack collaborated with Luke Burgis on some visualizations to celebrate the book launch. For years, he worked in advertising agencies, which roughly have a sole purpose of manufacturing desire.

Some of us like to think we recognize advertising and are above being manipulated. But you can advertise to that target as well. From Wanting:

The goal is getting people to think, “Oh, those lemming-like, silly people in the commercial.” The moment a person exempts themselves in their own mind from the very thing they see all around them is the moment when they are most vulnerable. As David Foster Wallace pointed out, “Joe Briefcase,” sitting on his couch watching the Pepsi commercial alone, thinks he has transcended the mass of plebeians that Pepsi must be advertising to—and then he goes out and buys more Pepsi, for reasons that he thinks are different.

We’re all the same: we want to be different.

  • Uniqlo oversized pocket t-shirt — Bought this because it’s comfortable. I bought like 7 of them because I don’t want to think about what I wear on most days. Yes, the whole uniform thing. It gets a little more meta, because I don’t want people to think that I do it to try to mimic Steve Jobs in some way.

I didn’t go full turtleneck. From Wanting:

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of the now-defunct biotech company Theranos, openly imitated Steve Jobs. She wore black turtlenecks and hired every Apple designer she could find. But imagine if a junior employee at Theranos started mimicking Holmes, walking around in black turtlenecks, sporting blue contact lenses, mimicking Holmes’s intense stare, even speaking in Holmes’s low pitch and dry style. What do you think would happen? They’d lose their job.

  • Lululemon joggers — Again, comfort first. So I say. But there are plenty of much much cheaper pants that are comfortable. These also look good. Another thing is that a decade ago I definitely didn’t think “I need men’s pants, I should go to Lululemon.”

From a CNBC article about lululemon in 2019:

“We have very low brand awareness with men,” CEO Calvin McDonald told analysts during a meeting in New York on Wednesday. “The opportunity isn’t just to be known,” he said, “but also being understood” as a brand that men — not just women — can shop.

And from Men’s Health:

Initially, I doubted whether such unicorn pants existed. Ultimately, I discovered my new favorite pair: the ABC Pant Classic from lululemon. When the pants were recommended to me by a colleague, I was skeptical. Doesn’t lululemon make yoga pants? But it turns out they have a really sharp, functional-yet-classy menswear line and after wearing the the ABC Pant for a full week, I’m now a lululemon convert.

  • Darn Tough socks — Again, comfort. I knew my 5th and 6th pair would be comfortable because I had a few already. But what about the first pair? I probably went online and searched for comfortable socks on Amazon, looked at customer reviews, then searched Reddit for confirmation. In this case of footwear, I wasn’t following the lead of an elite athlete. I’m slowly replacing a drawer full of Nike Elite Basketball socks, which are also very comfortable, just hot for California. But I also would sometimes overthink wearing those out, because I’m not particularly good at basketball. Which shouldn’t matter, but mimetic desire is kind of all about taking things that shouldn’t matter and making them matter.
  • Nike Metcons — Working backwards: I want to be healthy so I try to work out so I want to try the thing where you treat yourself to nicer workout clothes as motivation so I bought Nike shoes but wanted shoes with a low heel to toe drop because I think it’s supposed to be better for some leg movements but mostly I learned that from blogs and podcasts I listened to when I was really into Paleo (and lightly into CrossFit for the 1-2 months before lightly injuring myself) but didn’t verify it beyond that by reading any primary sources (not that I’d understand them anyway) and I got the black and white color because it matches with most things and matching matters because I don’t want to go out in completely unmatched clothes but I also don’t want to go out too color coordinated but but but…

And if you don’t want to match, you can choose not to match—the same way as everyone else. From Wanting:

When mimetic rivals are caught in a double bind, obsessed with each other, they go to any length to differentiate themselves. Their rival is a model for what not to desire. For a hipster, the rival is popular culture—he eschews anything popular and embraces what he believes to be eclectic, but he does so according to new models. According to Girard, “the effort to leave the beaten paths forces everyone into the same ditch.”

Next thing I want: to stop overthinking.

Done Well x Fulfilling

Check out the full notes for “Wanting” by Luke Burgis

From “Wanting” by Luke Burgis

The storytelling process that I use involves sharing stories about times in your life when you took an action that ended up being deeply fulfilling. Today it’s one of the first questions that I ask in any job interview because it helps cut through the thin stuff and goes straight to the essence of the person. “Tell me about a time in your life when you did something well and it brought you a sense of fulfillment,” I ask.

I just spent the last couple hours going through old posts on this site and adding books to the Book Notes section.

Activerecall co book notes
#First version of this book notes page#

I can’t say it was deeply fulfilling or done well but I feel some satisfaction. Through the past, maybe, 15 years I’ve rolled up my sleeves and written some PHP and CSS to hack on the WordPress installation of whatever site I was writing on at the time was.

Often times the things that have been deeply fulfilling have been side projects. Other times it has been work projects. I have noticed in the past few years that often times prototyping and demo’ing to teammates can be more fulfilling than digging into the details required for a public release.

These things are challenging in different ways.

It’s not an original comparison, but the past couple hours really felt like digital gardening.

And relating this to the mimetic desire topic of “Wanting”—I’ve always wanted to have a book notes page like Derek Sivers has. He continues living a lifestyle that matches up with values I want to have.

Not all mimicking is bad, so maybe this small step of making a book notes page and cleaning things up is a step in the right direction.

Podcast outline: Storyteling

Posting this right now. I’m doing an experiment where basically anything I’m making that’s public should start from the blog.

An outline post before the podcast episode, an outline post before a video, a blog post before turning it into a Twitter thread, etc.

So this is an outline for a podcast episode, which I can happily say that I actually recorded and just need to edit. (“Just.”) 

What do humans have that other animals don’t?

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes about the power of storytelling. Not to unlock the power of your imagination, but to get huge groups of people working together:

Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.

That said, with the podcast, I’m sort of looking to write more for the former—I just want to entertain one person at a time.

Even if that person is me, it could still be worth it.

In Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks explains a 5-minute exercise he calls homework for life.

Take 5 minutes and write down the answer to this question: what made today different?

Five minutes a day is all I’m asking. At the end of every day, take a moment and sit down. Reflect upon your day. Find your most storyworthy moment, even if it doesn’t feel very storyworthy. Write it down. Not the whole story, but a few sentences at most. Something that will keep you moving, and will make it feel doable. That will allow you to do it the next day. If you have commitment and faith, you will find stories. So many stories.

From there, you can relate your own stories to problems the audience relates to by connecting to a shared mental model.

Create a gap

I was watching some blackhead extraction videos the other day (because I hate myself). The formula is the same: the doctor comes in with a scalpel to open a gap, removes some junk, adds some cleaner, then closes it up again.

And if you can learn to become surgical with gaps, you’ll be a better storyteller.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath write about why some ideas stick around and others die. They write about six principles of sticky ideas. Principle 2 is unexpectedness—creating gaps in people’s heads then filling them in. 

How do you keep students engaged during the forty-eighth history class of the year? We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.

Create an opening, remove any of their misunderstanding, fill the gap with a clear explanation. Make it stick.