Author Archives: Ed Hulit

Constantly Varied

Constantly Varied (Wk49)

If you are like me, then your inbox is populated with newsletters from various sources of interest. And, if you are like me, you at least scan them before marking them read, delete, or archive.

This is why I post this newsletter online. You can choose to read it or not. The only requirement on your part is to either subscribe to this blog to receive notifications of new posts or bookmark this site in order to return at your leisure. I am good either way.

I am experimenting with a new format that utilizes section headers. Not sure how many is too much, or too little. Comments welcome.

NEWS TO ME

We are a bit late to the Netflix series ‘The Crown‘ but are now caught up to the 4th season. Prior to watching this show, I was never interested in the Monarchy, and apart from having a Corgi, had only casual knowledge of the Queen. However, I now have my phone at my side and find myself googling information throughout each episode. While the show at times fictionalizes some of the details, it’s still a fascinating story and an interesting piece of history.

SCIENCE & TECH

EPICUREAL VICE

As the days grow dark earlier and colder, I find myself turning away from lighter cool weather beverages like Heineken Light, Daytime IPA, and Yuengling Flight for heartier stouts and stronger drinks.

While I consider myself a whiskey (with an ‘e’) man; lately I’ve been reading up on bourbon and even bought a small bottle of Four Roses – Small Batch to try. It wasn’t my first choice, but since I have no experience with bourbon, I have nothing to compare it to. It does seem to pack a stronger bite than whiskey, though that isn’t all that bad.

I occasionally enjoy heavy imperial stouts (e.g. Old Rasputin) and came across these bourbon barrel stouts from Goose Island. At 14.3% ABV, this was the heaviest I’ve had to date. The smell of bourbon hits you first and eased back as I sipped it slowly over the course of an hour or so. I had read the taste changes the closer it gets to room temperature and found by the end it finished with a touch of sweetness. Highly recommend.

WORTH A READ

My Life Countdown
Kevin Kelly, author of Wired Magazine has been dubbed ‘the real world’s interesting man,’ and has been credited with coining the term ‘1,000 True Fans‘ and ‘the Death Clock’. He also runs his own website which among many aspects has a blog. I came across this post where he describes how an aging friend, tries to make the best use of the remaining years of his life.

TL;DR – imagine fitting what you want to accomplish in your life into 5-year blocks

The Archetypical Cycle of Internal Order and Disorder
Ray Dalio, Co-Chief Investment Officer & Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, L.P., is one of the smartest men in the world when it comes to investing. He has made enough money to last several lifetimes. More recently, he authored the book “Principles” and it has become the go-to tome for understanding management, economics, and life. This post is worth a read if you want to understand not only the cycle of order and disorder but where we are currently within it.

TL;DR – the US and China are at opposite positions in this cycle

ONLY IN JAPAN

As if Japan wasn’t safe enough, Honda has introduced a shoulder-mounted robot to help kids navigate to and from school. Despite being generally considered extremely safe compared to many countries (overall major crime rates are orders lower than the US), there are a surprising number of pedestrian deaths in Japan, particularly of children aged 7. This little robot is being compared to ‘lo-jack for your kid’.

DOUBLE-CLICK

Neanderthals not only fought but excelled at war. In this article, science tells the story of how Neanderthals resisted Homo sapiens (aka anatomically modern humans AMH) occupation of their land for 150,000 years. The larger build of the Neanderthal would have created difficulty in close-quarter combat with the slighter Homo sapien. The theory states AMH eventually resorted to longer-range weapons to defeat the Neanderthals.

In battle, their massive, muscular builds must have made them devastating fighters in close-quarters combat. Their huge eyes likely gave Neanderthals superior low-light vision, letting them maneuver in the dark for ambushes and dawn raids.

NICHOLAS R. LONGRICH.
Neanderthals And Humans Were at War For Over 100,000 Years, Evidence Shows

QUOTE TO LEAVE YOU WITH

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.”

Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell
Galaxy Brain is Real. The Atlantic

 

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Productivity

My Personal Productivity Setup in Notion

Notion is a flexible software that lets you organize information in various different ways. I first stumbled on Notion as an alternative to Evernote, which I had been using as my web clipper and a general repository for information. In contrast to Evernote, Notion offers better visualization tools to organize and present your information. Within Notion, you can create tables with formulas for data, Kanban boards and timelines for projects, and personal information pages that flow like a website. The tools in Notion work like widgets, letting you drag and drop them into any space on a page, giving you incredible design flexibility.

When I first started using Notion, I immediately dove into designing my own information ecosystem. And as much as I loved building in Notion, not grasping the full power of the software, and not having a clear understanding of how best to organize my own information, within a few days I had reached the limit on my free account.

This event caused me to rethink my information strategy and I began searching the web for help. A found a few web pages, like Rad Reads and Notion VIP, which were somewhat helpful, but I kept searching and combing through the productivity channels on YouTube which were doing reviews of Notion. Then I came across Ali Abdaal’s channel. For those of you who don’t know, Ali is a doctor from the UK and his channel features videos on personal productivity. It was his video on what he called a Resonance Calendar, that was of particular interest to me. The basic premise behind his Resonance Calendar is its a database in Notion that contains information he personally connected with, or resonated with and thus the name. For me, this was a great idea and one I incorporated into my Notion pages.

Then I came across August Bradley and saw a unique way to organize my Notion pages and began rebuilding my account from the ground up. He has a great series of videos on how he uses Notion and recommends using it. I wanted to watch them all, but they tended to be on the longer side 20-30 minutes. To do it efficiently, I created a page in Notion with a simple database table. Each row contained an embedded video along with a Due Date and a reminder. Each day I got a notification to watch a video as I had laid them out. This helped me get through the video playlist I created and afterward, I started rebuilding my Notion pages from scratch.

My Notion version 2.0 consisted of two main pages: Personal and Work. While I will mainly focus on my Personal page, I would like to say a few things about my Work page. The company I work for has several software systems to organize our data. For much of my job, I work across multiple software systems and there was no software in our suite in which I could effectively manage all my tasks, so I created one in Notion.

As for my Personal Page, it was constructed similarly to my Work page, albeit for personal things. The trouble was over time, I didn’t use my Personal page for anything other than a repository of articles, links, and videos to consume later.

Eventually, I stumbled on Tiago Forte and his PARA Method and it clicked for me. Without going into great detail, PARA stands for Projects, Areas (of Focus), Resources (of Information), and Archives. After a few design iterations, I found my personal preference tends toward the Gallery view in Notion. The Gallery visualizes data almost as a button, which if you are familiar with the early days of the internet, then you’ll understand when I say my Notion pages resemble a web page circa 1996. This works for me as my information is organized by subject and appears as a menu button on the main page. When I click the button, it opens another page wholly dedicated to the subject. There are subjects I frequent more than others, and those pages are built out much more than others. For example, I have a page for my YouTube channel, and within it, I’ve created a database table for all my videos and video ideas. The beauty of Notion is the flexibility to present the data in different ways. I mainly use a Calendar view to schedule when I want to publish a video and a Kanban view to manage at what stage each video is in. This may appear like a lot of work for a small channel like mine, but it helps keep me organized.

If you want to learn more about Notion, I have placed links to the webpages I found helpful and links to Ali, August and Tiago‘s YouTube channels.

If you found this post helpful, give it a like and share it with a friend. Thanks for reading all the way to the end, until next time…

Notable Notion webpages

Notion
RadReads
Notion VIP

 

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Reflections

Begun the Streaming War has!

There was a time, not long ago and not in a galaxy far, far away where Netflix was a monolith; the first of its kind.

Thirteen years ago, Netflix launched its innovative streaming service and in so doing, changed how we consume television and movies. In the time since several iterations of the original have emerged, arriving at today where another company has entered the streaming business: Discovery Channel.

Discovery is no threat to the existing streaming companies like Netflix or Disney, though its entry to the market does raise the stakes for the other less popular platforms. Not because of their content per se, but the cost.

Tired of paying too much for television channels they did not watch, the cord-cutting movement arose when people wanted to reduce their reliance and spending on bloated cable services. As time has gone on, the cable-cutters now face a similar dilemma compounded by the new ubiquity of streaming platforms – a choice of where to spend their money.

In the world of subscription as a service (SaaS), there is a term for the challenge of choosing which subscription services to maintain or let go of – ‘subscription fatigue‘. Now, with each month seeing a new streaming platform, consumers who followed the cord-cutter ethos of reducing the monthly cable bill, are now confronted with the rising cost of combined streaming platform subscriptions.

This situation illustrates an idea I’ve been trying to formulate regarding the innovation-iteration cycle; which is admittedly half-baked.

The basic hypothesis is the emergence of an innovation spawns several imitators, who offer an iteration of the original until there are so many iterations, the addressable market has become so fractionalized that no one company can maintain dominance.

There is support for this line of thinking and traditional business marketing would argue the first to market tends to earn the greatest portion of market share, and that generally holds true. In the book, ‘22 Immutable Laws of Marketing‘, the authors describe how the first three companies in a specific market tend to fall in a predictable ratio (4:2:1) of customer distribution like rungs on a ladder. The first rung occupied by the first company which has approximately 2x as many customers as the second rung company, and 4x as many customers as the lowest rung company.

Applying this to the streaming platforms, Netflix is the clear front-runner, followed closely by Amazon Prime Video, then Hulu. Though the distribution may not neatly align within the 4:2:1 ratio because there are several other competitors, not least which are Disney+, Apple+, HBO Max within the marketplace.

All of this to say, with each subscription platform iteration entering the market, each new entry will face less success as the total addressable market of consumers has already been fractionally distributed across the competitive landscape. Naturally, consumers faced with a growing cost of subscriptions will choose some over others. Content (what to watch) is a personal choice so combinations of platform subscriptions will vary and because these services are engaged on a month-to-month basis, consumers can drop one service to binge a series on another, only to drop that subscription in favor of something else. In the end, people may choose one or two base services to maintain, and rotate the third service depending on the programming offered.

And so it goes, streaming platforms are going to battle for dominance in the coming years until a new innovation comes along which may supplant the existing companies (as Netflix did to Blockbuster) or it may come from within one of them.

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Fitness, Tech, Videos

Goodbye Whoop

If you are new here, I have been using Whoop since August of 2019 and it has been my go-to training aid. It has helped me get better results from my workouts and recovery. I have made several videos on the subject and have nothing bad to say about it. Except now, I am leaving…

I first started using Whoop to monitor and learn what was happening to my body while training for the Ironman triathlon. If you are unfamiliar with Whoop, they are a company that provides a wearable tracking device that monitors your heart rate throughout the day and night. The reason I initially chose Whoop is that it collected and presented my workout and sleep data with a wearable device and tracks your physical strain and recovery on a day-to-day basis. It has been an incredibly useful tool over this past year.

Using Whoop for the past year has provided me with a keen understanding of what helps and hinders my sleep, which influences my recovery, which in turn influences how I train.

By now you might be asking, ‘If Whoop has been helpful, then why are you saying goodbye?’

To best explain my reasons, I will breakdown the value of Whoop for me into three main areas: sleep, recovery, and training.

First, the greatest value I derive from Whoop is sleep tracking. Over the past year, I have gained a great deal of insight into my sleep. The daily journal within their app helped me identify factors and patterns that positively and negatively affected my sleep. Limiting the negative factors while promoting positive ones has led to an increase in the quality and quantity of my sleep. With this insight, I feel confident I have built a foundation of good sleep practices that I can continue without Whoop. In turn, as long as I maintain these practices, it should lead to continued positive gains in recovery and training.

The second reason for this decision is I have recently acquired an Apple Watch SE. For me, there are several benefits to owning an Apple Watch and I will go into them in another video. As it relates to Sleep, the Apple Watch can keep track of how much time I spent in bed and asleep. One of the best things I learned from my time using Whoop was how to create a reliable sleep pattern. This means I know within a half-hour my ideal time to go to bed in order to wake up the next day and feel refreshed. The Apple Watch allows me to set a Sleep Goal which reminds me when it’s time to wind down before bed and then gently wakes me up in the morning. And because my body has adapted to a consistent sleep pattern, the haptic alarm on the Apple Watch is enough to wake me up and I haven’t yet slept through the alarm.

My third reason to leave Whoop has to do with the inter-relatedness of recovery and training. Training influences recovery, i.e. the harder the training, the more recovery needed. At a basic level getting more sleep can promote better recovery, though it doesn’t provide the whole story. When you don’t account for training effort and volume on a given day, you risk underestimating how recovered you are on a day-to-day basis. Fortunately for me, my primary training zone as an endurance athlete is aerobic in nature and when executed correctly, does not put as great a strain on my body as more intensive training efforts. As I have said before, I have never used Whoop as a heart rate monitor when training for triathlon. My preference has always been a chest strap heart rate monitor which is connected to my Garmin. At the end of each workout, the Garmin provides the recommended hours needed for a full recovery. Training for an Ironman, the majority of my workouts are performed within my low aerobic zone, i.e. Zone 2 heart rate, and the intensity of the workout is not that great, which does not require extended periods of recovery. With regard to workout intensity, the general rule I follow is to maintain an intensity that does not require more than 24 hours to full recovery. There are times when I disregard this rule, e.g. during a build phase, or a singular intense workout, though this isn’t that frequent during the base building phase. For me, my Garmin watch has become a reliable indicator of time to recovery and by keeping within these recommendations, and maintaining good recovery habits and practices I can keep my training on track.

Why am I now making the switch? For the past two months, I have been operating both Whoop and Apple sleep tracking systems in parallel to see how the data I am accustomed to from Whoop relates to the same data on the Apple Watch.

As a sleep tracker, both the Apple Watch and Whoop strap tracked my time in bed the majority of the time accurately. When I first got Whoop I was interested in the different phases of sleep but as time went on, I became less interested as there wasn’t a significant variance between each phase of sleep on a day-to-day basis. Currently, the Apple Watch does not track phases of sleep, and since this is not as important to me as time in bed, switching from Whoop to Apple works.

From a recovery and training aspect, as I said earlier I use Garmin and a heart rate monitor chest strap to track my heart rate data from endurance training. The Garmin provides a recovery guide in terms of hours before I should workout again, which has been a reliable guide between workouts. An additional aspect related to recovery is resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Whoop has an optical sensor that reads heart rate data throughout the day and factors that into its strain and recovery scores. The Apple Watch has an optical heart rate sensor which through a third-party app, helps me keep track of resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Prior to using Whoop, I used HRV4Training and found it helpful, though at the time it was measuring my heart rate using the flashlight inside my iPhone and my index finger. The HRV4Training app has an Apple Watch integration which now lets me track my resting heart rate and heart rate variability.

Given I can now replicate the benefits of Whoop using items I currently have, it made sense for me to switch. In these past two months, I have come to understand how each system works and how the data from one relates to the other. Running these two systems in tandem has given me the confidence I can move forward with one versus two. And because the Apple Watch provides a greater set of apps, tools, and integrations for my life, plus it can handle the most important aspects of Whoop – the choice to switch was easy for me.

As I go forward with the Apple Watch based sleep, recovery, and training tracking system, I have to acknowledge the switch would not have been as seamless had I not been a loyal Whoop user prior. I learned a great deal from wearing Whoop over the past year and that knowledge is what gave me the confidence to switch to a system that integrates better with my lifestyle. A side benefit of leaving Whoop is I won’t have to spend $30 a month for the data I can now get for free.

If you want to learn more about Whoop, please check out these videos, or visit their website:  Whoop.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end, until next time…

My first video featuring Whoop
Top 4 things I’ve learned and how it’s improved my training after using Whoop for 1 year.
Saying goodbye to Whoop and my reasons why.
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Constantly Varied

Constantly Varied (Wk48)

Constantly Varied is a collection of diverse topics of interest to me and intended to provide you with something you may not have found elsewhere.

If you are like me, then your inbox is populated with newsletters from various sources of interest. And, if you are like me, you at least scan them before marking them read, delete, or archive.

This is why I post this newsletter online. You can choose to read it or not. The only requirement on your part is to either subscribe to this blog to receive notifications of new posts or bookmark this site in order to return at your leisure. I am good either way.

I don’t yet have a format for the information other than to share the related subject. I don’t yet know how long or short they will be, but I will do my best to keep them above all else – interesting.

That being said, welcome to the week that was Week 48.

The End of an Era

Growing up going to the movies was a special event. I remember my mom taking me and my friends to see Top Gun for my birthday. And who can forget seeing Rocky on the big screen yelling ‘Drago!‘ in Rocky 4. Sitting in a theater to see a movie was something I enjoyed as a child, and an experience I also shared with my kids when they were younger. For good or bad, thanks to streaming technology and now the pandemic, it would seem that shared experience will forever be altered.
https://snacks.robinhood.com/newsletters/6RFtJk3mnCKOO7aaL4NeV/articles/5k77brddXY731lGleLUGG4/

How to Think for Yourself

Paul Graham is a smart guy. Apart from his success in founding Y Combinator, he is also an experienced essayist. In this piece he explains the importance of learning how to think for oneself.

It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you’re surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you’ll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more.

Paul Graham

http://paulgraham.com/think.html

Science & Technology

New Paradigms for Design

Tom Goodwin, author of ‘Digital Darwinism’ writes about the future and new opportunities for design and how companies like Amazon might be beaten.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-we-all-need-learn-from-hyperloop-tom-goodwin/

Futurism

A Long Read

Ask someone what they think of Silicon Valley or ‘Big Tech’ and you might be surprised by their contempt or adoration of the techno-intelligentsia. There is a famous article from Marc Andreessen in 2011, who proclaimed ‘Software is eating the World,’ which explains why software is taking over the world.

After watching the ‘Social Dilemma’, I, like many others, began to think about how I interact with social media. To some, social media is the new evil. Though if you’ve ever wondered where the vitriol comes from or wanted to go a bit further down that rabbit hole, then check out ‘The Californian Idealogy’, an essay written in the late 1990s and now 20 years later, is touted as the ‘religious creed of Silicon Valley’.

the Californian ideology has emerged from this unexpected collision of right-wing neo-liberalism, counter- culture radicalism and technological determinism – a hybrid ideology with all its ambiguities and contradictions intact. These contradictions are most pronounced in the opposing visions of the future which it holds simultaneously.

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (1995)

https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

TL;DR – the belief system of the ruling techie-class.

Worth Watching

Simone Giertz is a robotics enthusiast. I first encountered her when I watched a YouTube video in which she carved up a Tesla Model 3 and turned it into a pick-up truck (she named it Truckla). This is a TED Talk she gave a few years ago, but worth watching.

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Constantly Varied

Constantly Varied (Wk47)

Constantly Varied is a collection of diverse topics of interest to me and intended to provide you with something you may not have found elsewhere.

If you are like me, then your inbox is populated with newsletters from various sources of interest. And, if you are like me, you at least scan them before marking them read, delete, or archive.

This is why I post this newsletter online. You can choose to read it or not. The only requirement on your part is to either subscribe to this blog to receive notifications of new posts or bookmark this site in order to return at your leisure. I am good either way.

I don’t yet have a format for the information other than to share the related subject. I don’t yet know how long or short they will be, but I will do my best to keep them above all else – interesting.

That being said, welcome to the week that was Week 47.

Will Web Apps Bring About the End of the App Store?

If you own a smartphone then it’s a safe bet you might have purchased or downloaded an app for your phone. About 3 years ago I considered building a mobile app, and at the time was researching Progressive Web Applications (PWA) as a way to circumvent the hefty commission fees charged by Apple and Google for accessing their app marketplace. More recently, Fortnite, the huge multiplayer video game has been embroiled with Apple over the 30% cut from Fortnite app subscription sales. This hasn’t been resolved but it appears Fortnite is moving on from the App Store with a PWA version of their game, much like Google’s Stadia cloud-streaming platform. Several tech podcasters ask if this could be the beginning of the end for the App Store as we currently know it.

The Robot Revolution is Delayed, For Now

Yes, robots will play a role in the future of work. In the near future? Not likely. While there have been significant advancements in technology, our jobs are safe, for now.
https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/research-post/the-work-of-the-future-building-better-jobs-in-an-age-of-intelligent-machines/?utm_source=morning_brew

Science & Technology

Remote Working

Now that work from home is a new reality, I spend the majority of my workday ‘plugged in’ to my laptop and isolated from outside distractions by noise-canceling headphones. However, there are days when by the end of the day, I feel a slight pressure within my ear. I thought I was congested, but it could be from my noise-canceling headphones.
https://www.pointchaser.com/noise-cancelling-headphones-ear-pain/

A Long Read

For those who know me, or have read earlier posts on this blog, I am a fan of Tim Ferriss. And like Tim I am a Japanophile, or roughly translated in Japanese: Nihon otaku

This was a post I came across from his 5 Bullet Friday newsletter and immediately read myself as it was a convergence of these two interests. It is a story about a man’s purposely tech-disconnected walk across Japan along the ‘Nakasendo’, or inner mountain route, an ancient road used from the 15th-19th centuries.

In the context of a walk like this, “boredom” is a goal, the antipode of mindless connectivity, constant stimulation, anger and dissatisfaction. I put “boredom” in quotes because the boredom I’m talking about fosters a heightened sense of presence. To be “bored” is to be free of distraction.

https://www.wired.com/story/six-weeks-100s-miles-hours-glorious-boredom-japan/

TL;DR – Being present in the moment, free from the interruptions of notifications and distractions from social media feeds reinforces how to better use these tools without being used by them.

Another Lesson from Japan

As someones who strives to practice essentialism, this is more a reminder for me but could be for you.
‘Hara hachi bu’: Everything in moderation
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/japanese-80-percent-diet-rule-can-help-you-live-longer-says-longevity-expert.html

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Active Lifestyle, Fitness, Videos

10,000 Kettlebell Swings

There are times when I feel content to remain in my training comfort zone, and in the closing months of summer, much of it was singularly focused on triathlon-specific training.

Feeling my training was becoming routine, I decided it was time to break out of this pattern and decided to take on a month-long workout challenge.

I don’t know if you are like me, but sometimes I need a new physical challenge to spark a new focus in training.

So, this past October I decided to perform 10,000 kettlebell swings.

I became a kettlebell instructor in 2006 and have used them in my own training and with clients over the years. Like anything new at the time, I was all kettlebell, all the time. Though as time passed, the kettlebell became another tool in my training toolbox and it wasn’t until the pandemic and ensuing lockdown that my focus returned to kettlebell training exclusively.

For much of my pandemic era workouts, the kettlebell workouts focused on a mix of movements. These workouts consisted of swings, snatch, cleans, presses, and the occasional snuster (which is a combination of a snatch followed by a thruster). And while these are effective movements for much of these workouts, I felt like I was just going through the motions.

It was time to shake things up.

Therein comes the swing challenge.

Now, if you look it up online, there are a few different variants of the swing challenge – each valuable in their own right. Except, I wanted to go back to the root of my early kettlebell training and focus on the swing.

As a movement pattern, the kettlebell swing is brutally effective and packs a one-two punch as a conditioning method to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and as a strengthening exercise to improve maximal and explosive strength.

For triathletes and runners, this is worth taking notice of. Meaning, if you could buy a single piece of equipment to supplement your strength training for triathlon, it would be hard to argue against the kettlebell.

During my October challenge, I broke down the 10,000 swings into 21 workouts with a goal of completing 500 swings per workout by the end and spread them out over a 4-week period. I chose a three-day on, one-day off pattern which ensured I had adequate rest days throughout the challenge. The volume of swings in the initial workouts was purposely less to provide a gradual progression up to 500 swings. For almost all the workouts, I used a 16kg kettlebell and performed a hand-to-hand swing versus a two-handed swing. This allowed me to focus on building grip strength and midline stability by resisting excessive counter-rotation movement during each single-arm swing.

Over 21 workouts it took 7 hours and 21 minutes to complete all 10,000 swings. The median workout duration was just under 20 minutes (19:45). There were two workouts over 30 minutes because I took an extended recovery period, but the rest were completed as EMOMs (every-minute-on-the-minute). 50% of the workouts were 20 rounds of 25 swings, which meant at the start of every minute I performed 25 swings and had the remainder of the minute to rest. On average 25 swings took about 42-45 seconds to complete, giving me 15-18 seconds of rest between rounds.

For those of you not familiar with kettlebells, one of the key principles of training is the preservation of momentum. In the swing, for example, the goal is to keep the kettlebell moving. As you can imagine, over the course of hundreds of swings during this challenge, you develop an efficient swing pattern and eliminate any wasted energy. In kettlebell lingo, we call this soft-style, or endurance weightlifting, where the effort is placed on keeping a steady pace and effort throughout.

The endurance aspect of kettlebell training is what’s important for triathletes. Over the course of the workouts, my heart rate average settled around the Zone 1/Zone 2 mark. Now, with 20 minutes of effort on average, I wouldn’t say these workouts challenged my cardio, however, the lower intensity of soft-style kettlebell training provided other benefits; like improved recovery times and increased posterior strength.

By keeping my heart rate between Zone 1 & 2, the lower intensity effort doesn’t overload the autonomic nervous system, which positively affects heart rate variability. And because the kettlebell swing is a hip-hinge movement, the glutes, and spinal erectors are under constant load which helps improve not only running posture but also running power.

In practical terms, this kettlebell swing challenge was a great reminder of why kettlebell training will be a staple of my regime and I would encourage you to consider adding kettlebell training to your program if you haven’t already.

If you want to learn more, send me a message. If you liked this video, consider subscribing to my channel to keep up to date with all my latest videos.

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Constantly Varied

Constantly Varied – First Edition (Wk46)

I have a diverse set of interests and a wide bandwidth for collecting information. One of my strengths is catalyzing information from disparate sources and synthesizing them into something new. Sometimes this is a unique thought, other times merely my version of someone else’s original thought. Either way, the purpose of this newsletter is to share with you things I have found across the web, from subscribed newsletters, articles, social media posts, and the like. For now, I am calling it Constantly Varied.

The name comes from the world of fitness. It is the first two words used to describe what CrossFit is: ‘constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity,’ and it sums up my interests and ideas.

I don’t yet have a format for the information other than to share the related subject. I don’t yet know how long or short they will be, but I will do my best to keep them above all else – interesting.

Bait & Switch

Google recently announced their ‘unlimited photo storage’ will no longer be available as it was initially promised, i.e. free storage for all photos and videos that were uploaded in high quality would NOT count against your storage limit. As of June 1, 2021, Google will count your high-quality photos and videos toward the free 15GB limit. If you are like me, I have all my photos stored in Google Photos. The good news is, all the photos and videos stored BEFORE June will not count against the 15GB limit.

Come June 1, 2021, all of your new photos will count against your free Google storage

Science & Technology

Futurism

My kids have heard me say robotics is going to be part of the future. I am of the belief that most repetitive function jobs will be automated in the future, some sooner than others. Just look at Miso Robotics. In the nearer term, this shift will require new skills among traditionally ‘blue-collar’ jobs, though eventually will cross into ‘white-collar’ jobs as well. This slide deck explains some of the key skills every employee will have to have in the future where humans interact with, and work hand-in-hand with automation and AI.
https://www2.slideshare.net/BernardMarr/9-soft-skills-every-employee-will-need-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence-ai

A Long Read

This is a speech from Teddy Roosevelt in which he extolls the virtues of hard work, resiliency, and ambition. When I was a teenager I had the following quote taped to the back of my bedroom door. It was a reminder of what possibilities lie ahead. This is the speech where it came from.  NOTE: This was written in 1899 and while the language is gender bias and dated, replace the masculine with whatever gender pronouns you believe in.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

https://www.bartleby.com/58/1.html

TL;DR – It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Timely Musings

The world has a new ‘normal’ and videoconferencing is here to stay. This company has improved the videoconference experience, where instead of partially dressing professionally (i.e. business attire for what’s on-camera and casual for off-camera) one can stay in their PJs all day. Good or bad? I don’t know. https://xpressioncamera.com/

That’s all for now.

If you found this interesting, let me know.

-Ed

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Reflections

On simplicity

Call it Minimalism, call it Essentialism, call it Kanso; whatever you call it, simplicity is an ideal I strive for in all manner and things.  When I was younger I adopted a line of thinking which stated ‘the more keys I had on my key chain, the more hectic my life was.’ For a time, I actually had my life down to two keys – my car and my house.

As someone who practices Essentialism in both aspects of my life (personal and work), I try to focus only on the important few over the trivial many. In recent years, this ‘productivity hack’ that has helped me get things done at work by employing a single-task focus as often as possible. Prior to this practice, I used to feel paralyzed by the data abundance in my information feed. I have a very high bandwidth for information, once a friend called it a ‘curse’.  Through practice I have learned to catalyze disparate information from a wide variety of sources into my own framework in order to create something (a habit, tactic, system, etc.) that works for me.  Take for example, the concepts of the Maker’s schedule, Ultradian cycles, and Deep Work. At a surface level these may seem like different ideas, though I see an underlying principle connecting them together. While they may have different tactics, their end-game strategy is congruent.  The point being, rather than follow a new trend in management from HBR, LinkedIn, or any other source in my information feed, in the words of Bruce Lee, I strive to ‘strip away the inessentials, take what it useful, and make it (my) own.’

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

To re-phrase this well-known adage – ‘simple and easy are not always the same thing.’  This is a truth I strive to live by and sometimes requires a great deal of thought and work to make something simple, and certainly sometimes that makes it easier.

My personal habits lean toward minimalist tendencies as well.  For clothes I often wear and re-wear the same things over and over.  In fact, each of the past years, at least once, if not twice a year, I go through my clothes and lessen my wardrobe.  It has gotten to the point where I have only a few ‘nice’ shirts and several plain t-shirts, a few pairs of jeans, shorts, sweaters, and sweatshirts to fill out my options.  Shoes and sneakers are the last bastion of abundance in my wardrobe lessening, and honestly I don’t know if I can (mentally) get there.  If there is one thing I find essential – it’s a variety of footwear.  For example, as someone who runs, I have three different pairs of running shoes, each for a different type of running – everyday, long distance, and trail.  To me these are tools, not casual footwear.  But I digress…

On the subject of simplicity, take for example the circle atop this post.  In Japanese calligraphy the drawing of a circle represents a disciplined focus to remain free (simple) yet deliberate in the movements of the brush in hand.  The circle when drawn open represents imperfection, when drawn closed, perfection.  For some, this is just a circle. To others it represents something more profound.  Take for example, the book cover for ‘Essentialism’ by Greg McKeown, here the author uses a circle to illustrate how focusing on what matters can make the difference in an otherwise hectic life.

Simplicity is an ideal I strive toward. Taking this journey has not been easy and has even caused friction with past friends in my life, but the process has been worth the effort.  By focusing my approach to life, and even work, around a vital few aspects while aiming to minimize the trivial many has made all the difference.  The longer I practice this one habit in all areas of my life, the simpler it gets.

Affiliate Links

Essentialism book on Amazon.com

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