Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Also,

Thursday, January 2, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3607 - Keeping a Suspense File Gives you Super Powers



A Sense of Doubt blog post #3607 - Keeping a Suspense File Gives you Super Powers

Occasionally, I open emails, newsletters and such.

As a big fan of Cory Doctorow, recent posts of his on Medium that are cross-posted to his own site --Pluralistic -- caught my eye. I used the content on Pluralistic as it had a better layout and design.

Following on yesterday's anti-resolutions post, I share this article.

I love anything to do with work process.

I like Doctorow's take on the to-do list, and I see how it works well for him. I am not sure if my work would benefit from this approach, but I will never avoid learning about or sharing other people's work process. 

I also included some of Doctorow's content beyond the "suspense file" essay.

Enjoy.

Thanks for tuning in.

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-10-26-one-weird-trick-todo-txt-3a58188ba241

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo.txt



Pluralistic: Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers (26 Oct 2024)

Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers (permalink)

Two decades ago, I was part of a group of nerds who got really interested in how each other managed to do what we did. The effort was kicked off by Danny O'Brien, who called it "Lifehacking" and I played a small role in getting that term popularized:

https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt

While we were all devoted to sharing tips and tricks from our own lives, many of us converged on an outside expert, David Allen, and his bestselling book "Getting Things Done" (GTD, to those in the know):

https://gettingthingsdone.com/

GTD is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of "projects" – things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

The point of all this list-making isn't to do everything on the lists. While these lists do help you remember what to do next, what they're really good for is deciding what not to do – at all. The promise of GTD is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they're not the most important things.

GTD recognizes that you can be very "productive" (in the sense of getting many things done) and still not do the things that you really wanted to do. You know what this is like: you finish a Sunday with an organized sock-drawer, all your pennies neatly rolled, the trash-can in your car emptied…and no work at all on that novel you're hoping to write.

You can't do everything, but you can control what you don't do, rather than just defaulting into completing a string of trivial, meaningless tasks and leaving the big stuff on the sidelines. Organizing your own tasks and projects is a hugely powerful habit, and one that's made a world of difference to my personal and professional life.

But while good to-do lists can take you very far in life, they have a hard limit: other people. Almost every ambitious thing you want to do involves someone else's contribution. Even the most solitary of projects can be derailed if your tax accountant misses a key email and you end up getting audited or paying a huge penalty.

That's where the other kind of GTD list comes in: the list of things you're waiting for from other people. I used to be assiduous in maintaining this list, but then the pandemic struck and no one was meeting any of their commitments, and I just gave up on it, and never went back…until about a month ago. Returning to these lists (they're sometimes called "suspense files") made me realize how many of the problems – some hugely consequential – in my life could have been avoided if I'd just gone back to this habit earlier.

My suspense file is literally just some lines partway down a text file that lives on my desktop called todo.txt that has all my to-dos as well. Here's some sample entries from my suspense file:

WAITING EMAIL Sean about ENSHITTIIFCATION manuscript deadline 10/24/24
WAITING EMAIL Russ about missing royalty statement 10/12/24
WAITING EMAIL Alice about Christmas vacation hotel 10/8/24 10/20/24
WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

WAITING CALL LA County about mosquito abatement 10/25/24
WAITING CALL School attendance officer about London trip 10/18/24

WAITING MONEY EFF reimbusement for taxi to staff retreat $34.98 10/7/24

WAITING SHIPMENT New Neal Stephenson novel from Bookshop.org 10/23/24

This is as simple as things could possibly be! I literally just type "WAITING," then a space, then the category of thing I'm waiting for, then a few specifics, then the date. When I follow up on an item, I add the date of the followup to the end of the line. If I get some details that I might need to reference later (say, a tracking code for a shipment, or a date for an event I'm trying to organize), I'll add that, too, as it comes up. Creating a new entry on this list takes 10-25 seconds. When someone gets back to me, I just delete that line.

That is literally it.

Every day, or sometimes a couple of times a day, I will just run my eyes up and down this list and see if there's anything that's unreasonably overdue, and then I'll send a reminder or make a followup call. In the example above, you can see that I've been chasing Ted about Sacramento for months now (this is a fake entry – no plans to go to Sacto at the moment, sorry):

WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

So now I've emailed Ted four times. Maybe my email's going to his spam, and so I could try emailing a friend of Ted and ask them to check whether he's getting my messages. But maybe Ted's trying to send me a message here – he's just not interested in doing the event after all. Or maybe Ted is available, but he's so snowed under that he's in danger of fumbling it, and I need to bring in some help if I want it to happen.

All of these are possibilities, and the fact that I'm tracking this means that I now get to make an active decision: cancel the gig or double down on making sure it happens. Without this list, the gig would just die by default, forgotten by both of us. Maybe that's OK, but I can't tell you how many times I've run into someone who said, "Dammit, I just remembered I was supposed to email you about getting that thing done and I dropped the ball. Shit! I really was looking forward to that. Is it too late now?" Often it is too late. Even if it's not, the work of picking up the pieces and starting over is much more than just following through on the original plan.

Restarting my suspense file made me realize how many of the (often expensive or painful) fumbles I've had since the pandemic were the result of me not noticing that someone else hadn't gotten back to me. In essence, a suspense file is a way for me to manage other people's to-do lists.

Let me unpack that. By "managing other people's to-do lists," I don't mean that I'm deciding for other people what they will and won't do (that would be both weird and gross). I mean that I'm making sure that if someone else fails to do something we were planning together, it's because they decided not to do it, not because they forgot. As GTD teaches us, the real point of a to-do list isn't just helping us remember what to do – it's helping us choose what we're not going to do.

This is not an imposition, it's a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn't to nag others into living up to their commitments, it's to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we're not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.

I have frequent collaborators whom I know to be incapable of juggling too many things at once, and my suspense file has helped me hone my sense of when it would be appropriate to ask them if they want to do something together and when to leave them be. The suspense file helps me dial in how much I rely on each person in my life (relying on someone isn't the same as valuing them – and indeed, one way to value someone is to only rely on them for things they're able to do, rather than putting them in a position of feeling bad for failing you).

Lifehacking gets a bad rap, and justifiably so. Many of the tips that traffick as "lifehacks" are trivial or stupid or both. What's more, too much lifehacking can paint you into a corner where you've hacked any flexibility out of your life:

https://locusmag.com/2017/11/cory-doctorow-how-to-do-everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/

But ever since Danny coined the term "lifehack," back in 2004, I've been cultivating daily habits that have let me live the life I wanted to live, accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish. I figured out how to turn daily writing into a habit and now I've written more than 30 books:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

A daily habit of opening a huge, ever-tweaked collection of tabs has made me smarter about the news, helped me keep tabs on my friends, helped me find fraudsters who were trying to steal my identity, and ensured that all those Kickstarter rewards and other long-delayed, erratic shipments didn't slip through the cracks:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

Daily habits are superpowers. Once something is a habit, you get it for free. GTD turns on decomposing big, daunting projects into bite-sized, trackable tasks. I have a bunch of spaces around the house – my office, my closet, the junk sheds down the side of the house, our tiki bar – that I used to clean out once or twice a year. Each one was all-day, sweaty, dirty job, and for most of the year, all of those spaces were a dusty, disorganized mess.

A month ago, I added a new daily task: spend five minutes cleaning one space. I did the bar first, and after two weeks, I'd taken down every tchotchke and bottle and polished it, reorganizing the undercounter spaces where things pile up:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=tiki+bar&view_all=1

Now I'm working through my office. Ever day, I'm dusting a bookshelf and combing through it for discards to stick in our Little Free Library. Takes less than five minutes most day, and I'll be done in about three weeks, when I'll move on to my closet, then the side of the house, and then back to the bar. A daily short break where I get away from my computer and make my living and working environments nicer is a wonderful habit to cultivate.

I'm 53 years old now. I was 33 when I started following Getting Things Done. In that time, I've gotten a lot done, but what's even more relevant is that I got a lot of things not done, too – things that I consciously chose not to abandon. Figuring out what you want to do, and then keeping it on track – in manageable, healthy, daily rhythms that bring along the other people you rely on – may not be the whole secret to a fulfilled life, but it's certainly a part of it.



Hey look at this (permalink)


A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrago Printer cartridges aren’t copyrighted works https://web.archive.org/web/20041102085343/http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/10/static_control_.html

#15yrsago Italian politician sues 4000+ YouTube commenters https://web.archive.org/web/20091030044651/http://www.antoniodipietro.com/en/2009/10/we_will_defend_you_all_from_cu.html

#15yrago Terrified London cops spending millions gathering useless intelligence on peaceful protestors https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/26/police-protest-data-protection

#10yrsago Edward Snowden interviewed by Lawrence Lessig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE

#10yrsago CHP officer who stole and shared nude photos of traffic-stop victim claims “it’s a game” https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/east-bay-chp-officer-accused-of-stealing-nude-photos-says-its-game-for-police-california-highway-patrol-sean-harrington/

#5yrsago “Affordances”: a new science fiction story that climbs the terrible technology adoption curve https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/affordances-cory-doctorow-sf-story-algorithmic-bias-facial-recognition.html

#5yrsago Nearly all Americans’ taxes will go down under Medicare for All https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/medicare-for-all-taxes-saez-zucman

#5yrsago Researchers’ budget blown when a migrating eagle’s tracker chip connects to an Iranian cellular tower and sends expensive SMSes https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50180781

#5yrsago New Hampshire state Rep John Potucek kills Right to Repair bill: “cellphones are throwaways…just get a new one” https://www.vice.com/en/article/lawmaker-kills-repair-bill-because-cellphones-are-throwaways/

#1yrago Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

This is Cory Doctorow:



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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2501.02 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3471 days ago & DAD = 127 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Wednesday, January 1, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3606 - I Do Not Make New Year's Resolutions and Lists of January First Posts




A Sense of Doubt blog post #3606 - I Do Not Make New Year's Resolutions and Lists of January First Posts

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions.

The main reason is that I do not follow the herd. If everyone is turning left, I am apt to turn right just to be different, if not out of actual spite.

Another reason is that I do not an artificial reason to resolve to do something.

I am making resolutions all the time. I am setting goals. I am assessing the goals I set. I am thinking about what is possible and what is not.

Recently, I learned of a book that will be the subject of a future blog post (possibly yet this week): 


But I do not get everything done.

I set priorities.

I used to think that the character of "Richard" in the movie The Big Chill was such a square, and he was mocked compared to the more colorful characters in the rest of the cast. But one of his big lines was "you set your priorities and that's the way life is." And he was right. I couldn't see that truth well in 1980, but I can now as I have been doing it for years.

Learning about Getting Things Done (GTD to the initiated), I realized that I already do the main concept: prioritize what has to be done, micro-steps, and then a list of projects. Long-term goals are not always met, but they can be remembered. Short-term goals are meeting deadlines and doing the daily things that must be done, such as cleaning the kitchen and making dinner, which is what I am about to do.

Get shit done.

That's been my motto since realizing I became an adult when I wasn't paying attention to how I had changed.

But in getting things done, set goals that are achievable and don't set goals just because everyone else is doing so, such as on January first each year.

It's easy to set a goal when we're not at work, things in the world are in a lull for the holidays, we're not driving ahead full bore. And grand, lofty goals that have not been achieved and still may not because the change needed to achieve them is so radical is not a recipe to feel good about yourself and to succeed.

That's just me, though.

Resolve things today if you want.

Don't feel like you have to.

Set intentions when you are ready to set intentions. Below is a shared article that re-iterates some of what I have written.

Also, below is a list of all the January First posts going back to the t-shirt blog and one from a January fourth in 2015 when I was not on a daily schedule and so there was no January First post, but close enough, it's like a January First post.

Thanks for tuning in.


FORMER JANUARY FIRST POSTS 
- Ten Years of January Firsts



Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Sunday, January 4, 2015

I know, not a January first.

But I wasn't blogging daily in January of 2015. After the t-shirt year ended in March of 2014, I tried to do weekly posts from then until July 6th 2015, two days after my died when I RESOLOVED to return to a daily schedule.

Friday, January 1, 2016


























Sunday, January 1, 2017


Monday, January 1, 2018




















Tuesday, January 1, 2019


Wednesday, January 1, 2020



Friday, January 1, 2021


Saturday, January 1, 2022


and again.....













Monday, January 1, 2024



And a share.... oh look, a counseling blog!

LOL.

Y'all know I am back to school for counseling, right?





New Year’s Resolutions: The Top 5 Reasons New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Achieve Results and The Best Way to Achieve the results you are After

Have you ever made a New Year’s Resolution? Have you ever kept a New Year’s Resolution? Chances are, if you have made them, you have also broken them. Why is this? We are sooooo motivated at the time we make the resolution that it seems impossible to fail. But fail we most often do. Here are the top 5 reasons we don’t reach the goals we set when making New Year’s resolutions:

#5 . The resolution is completely result focused.
#4. It is made at the peak of motivation.
#3. It usually involves an extreme change of habit.
#2. We expect ourselves to be perfect in this new behavior.
#1. We want immediate gratification, which sacrifices lasting change.

The best way to make permanent change is to focus instead on:

  1. What you value.
  2. Take small realistic process focus steps or habits to bring you toward what you value, or a goal aligned with what you value.
  3. Make it easier on yourself to keep doing this new habit and more difficult to stick to your prior habits.
  4. Lasting change takes time and patience.
  5. Give yourself praise when you follow the process, and forgiveness when you don’t. This is a very important step. Positive reinforcement, praise, makes it easier to continue on the journey toward your value related goal. Negative reinforcement, beating yourself up when you make a mistake, can go a long way toward forcing you to quit before you reach your goal.

For instance, if you want to lose 20 lbs:

  1. First ask yourself why this is important to you. If you want to live a longer, more enjoyable life and your doctor has told you losing weight would help get you there, then you have your why.
  2. Now that you know what is important to you about losing weight, slow and steady wins the race. What actions does a healthy eater take? Develop a realistic plan that allows for healthy eating and slow weight loss.
  3. Then carry out those actions in small steps. Plan healthy meals. Purchase healthy food. Have healthy food prepared and available. Remember, you are focusing on the process of being a healthy person, not how fast you can lose twenty pounds. The end result will be the product of the daily habits in this process.
  4. Make it easier to eat well than to eat the way you used to eat. Only buy groceries on your meal plan. Be intentional when dining out. Know what you will order ahead of time and only look at that part of the menu. Keep focus on who you want to be.
  5. Lastly, applaud yourself when you follow the process you have created. Create a reward system. Put a marble in a jar every day that you follow your process. This is a way to see one immediate result while being more patient for the longer term goal. This positive reinforcement is very important to your likelihood of continuing on long enough to establish your new habit of health eating. Just as important-don’t give yourself negative reinforcement. Don’t beat yourself up when you get off track. Be forgiving of yourself, and you will be more likely to get back on track.

Instead of new year’s resolutions, it’s more important that we ask ourselves regularly, “Who do I want to be and what do I want to stand for in this world?” then take action toward that, in small, doable ways that then become habits. Results are the outcome of small habits taken daily.




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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2501.01 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3470 days ago & DAD = 126 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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