habit – Climb to the Stars

Nearly a Week With Less Facebook [en]

[fr] Il y a près d'une semaine, sur une impulsion, j'ai supprimé de mon téléphone l'application Facebook: c'était en effet principalement sur mon téléphone que je me retrouvais à consulter mon fil d'actus de façon un peu frénétique, compulsive. Et ces temps, les nouvelles du monde qui ont envahi "mon" Facebook commençaient à me peser. Le fait d'avoir cette icône bleue sur l'écran de mon téléphone à chaque fois que je l'ouvrais pour faire quoi que ce soit ne m'aidait pas à prendre de la distance. Du coup, j'ai l'application Groupes, Pages, et Messenger -- mais pour Facebook tout court je vais sur l'ordi ou l'iPad, ou dans le navigateur sur mon téléphone (c'est moins "agréable" mais ça marche). Et bien sûr, je peux toujours réinstaller l'application! Mais pour le moment, j'apprécie le retour au calme que cette modification de mon environnement numérique m'apporte.

The morning after I wrote my last post about being exposed to too much news, I decided to try removing the Facebook app from my phone. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea, prompted by a few death announcements in my social circle on top to all the difficult world news we’re dealing with nowadays.

The fact that I get “caught up” in Facebook, compulsively cycling through my newsfeed and notifications, has been bothering me for a while. Time flies by and I’m still on Facebook.

Where this happens most is on my phone, particularly because I can carry it around all over the place the easiest. I will stand up and leave the computer. I will leave the iPad lying around somewhere. But the phone is always with me.

And the Facebook app is there, on my home screen, staring at me each time I turn on my phone for anything. And I get lost inside.

As you know if you’ve been following me for some time, I’m super interested in stuff like procrastination, change, habits. And I probably have already mentioned an idea I found clearly expressed on James Clear’s blog: environment is key in shaping our habits. If I think about my “Facebook habit”, clearly the fact that this app is so prominently displayed on my screen is encouraging it.

I remember one step of Note to Self’s “Bored and Brilliant” challenge was to delete your favorite app from your phone for a day. I didn’t like the idea. I preferred to think that I could have the discipline not to check my phone compulsively. And I can. But the problem is when I go to my phone for something else, and end up on Facebook instead — or afterwards.

Anyway. I decided to remove the app for the day, to give myself some space away from all the news. I can still check Facebook on my iPad or computer — or even in the browser — but it’s not staring at me each time I pick up my phone anymore.

Quite fast, I replaced it with the Facebook Groups app. I love Facebook Groups and am active in quite a few of them. They are not saturated with world news or people dying. They are not as active as my newsfeed, and therefore don’t lead to as much compulsive reloading. I also unearthed the Pages app so I could post to my pages. And I use Messenger, of course.

I realised that doing this gave me a breather. So I didn’t reinstall the app the next day. Or the next. It’s been nearly a week now, and I might keep things like this. I’ve been through the browser interface a few times, but it’s less seamless than the app, and so you don’t get “sucked in” as much.

Let me make it clear: this is absolutely not about “quitting Facebook” or anything like that. It is about “less compulsion”. About helping myself spend my time with more decision, less automation. It’s funny, I never thought I would do this. Had you asked me 10 days ago I would have said it was a silly idea. Or that I didn’t want to “cut the cord” like that. And I might roll this change back. But just now, I’m finding that being able to take a few steps back from my “TV 2.0” is really helpful.

Blogging, Morning Pages, Goals, Habits, and Accounting [en]

[fr] Petite réflexion sur ma difficulté à bloguer régulièrement, une prise de conscience sur le type d'activité que j'arrive à faire régulièrement (comparé aux projets long-terme devant lesquels je me décourage), et peut-être une clé pour exploiter l'un afin de me réconcilier avec l'autre. Ayant avec succès fait de bonnes avancées dans ma compta (en souffrance permanente) après avoir décidé de bloquer trois heures par semaine pour ça, je vais tenter de faire ça avec le blog. C'est trop de temps, me direz-vous, et vous avez raison: mais j'ai d'autres occupations "B" pour remplir la plage de temps si je n'en ai pas besoin en entier.

I am not blogging as much as I would like. This has been a constant over the last years and you’re probably tired of hearing me say it. Trust me, I’m even more tired of living it.

I have tons of things to write about. But I’m also stressed about “more important” things I feel I have to do before I blog (like work; or accounting). And then my post ideas turn into Big Ideas and I don’t dare start writing because I fear I’ll end up writing for hours. And then time passes, and I haven’t blogged, and the more time passes, the more I pressure myself to produce something, and the less I start writing — because blogging for me is about responding to an impulse to share.

So, this is an ongoing struggle.

Why bother? Blogging is important to me because it holds meaning. For my life, I mean. I guess it’s a bit tacky or commonplace in the era of social media (or are we post-social-media yet?) but writing in public is one of the main ways I try to contribute to the world.

Here are two ideas. I can directly link their existence to the fact I started doing Morning Pages.

The first is that I should give myself a rule. It would like something like this: “If I haven’t posted an article in the last 10 days, I will write an article about anything, just to get an article out.”

A few comments about this.

This is what I’m doing now. For weeks, “write blog post” has been scurrying around in my task lists. But I never get around to it. I have a list of things to write about, which means I can’t decide which one to start with, adding another reason not to write. Tonight, I just thought “OMG, I just need to write something to reset the clock and remove the pressure”.
I don’t like the idea of “filler” blogging. You see it on high-volume blogs, mainly: fluffy articles that are obviously there so that something could be published today. I’m making the bet that because my non-writing is not related to “not enough to say”, I will not fall into that trap. Another difference, I think, is that I’m “producing content” (ack) for me (to help myself blog) rather than to reach some kind of objective, or for others.
Morning Pages have shown me that I can write about anything for three pages. I don’t suffer from writer’s block much (though… maybe this thing I’m struggling with is blogger’s block), but even so, it gives me the confidence that if I open a new blog post I will have things to write about.

The second idea is more something that I have understood about myself, while doing Morning Pages. You see, I’ve often wondered why although I see myself as somebody who has trouble working on things long-term (writing a book, fear) I am usually very good at sticking with something once I decide to do it. In that way, I am disciplined. I have been doing judo for over twenty years. Blogging for sixteen. On a smaller scale, when I start doing something I very often stick with it for quite some time. I’m not the person who signs up at the gym and goes twice.

Morning Pages is another example: I took up the exercise to see if it worked for me, but it was pretty clear I was going to be sticking with it for at least weeks (more like months) to try it out.

I realised that there is a common denominator to these activities that I stick with: they are repetitive. Small chunks of activity that I repeat again and again and again. Writing a book feels like one big activity that you need to slice up to get through it. Writing morning pages or blogging is a collection of little activities that end up coming together to become a big one.

This gave me a key: turn long-term activities or projects into a small-scale form that I can repeat regularly and stick to.

This probably sounds trivial to you. Of course the way to approach a big project is to slice it up into manageable chunks. I knew that too. But I think the missing piece is the idea to turn the objective into a habit, not just into a series of sub-objectives.

Earlier this year, Jean-Christophe Aubry gave a workshop on goal setting at eclau. I am not exaggerating by saying it was life-changing for me. I am still digesting some of the things I learned and will write about it in the future. (I actually followed the workshop a second time as Elisabeth and I invited Jean-Christophe to hold it during our career development workshop series for musicians.)

One of my first take-aways was the distinction between mastery and performance/results goals. Mastery goals are much more motivating and tend to be those that end up working. So the trick is to transform your initial goal (often performance or result) into a mastery goal. James Clear has written about similar stuff. A very rough summary would be to focus on building habits rather than setting goals.

Anyway, all this coalesced for me a few months ago. My ongoing yearly pain as a solopreneur is my accounting. Each year, I find myself with piles of unsorted receipts and expenses and a rather tight stressful deadline to get everything done for my accountant so I can avoid getting in trouble with our tax service. Each year, I vow to do things differently next year, and keep my accounting up-to-date. Each year, I fail.

I had a brainwave one morning whilst doing my Morning Pages: what if I firewalled time to work on my accounting, a little each week? I had too much stuff going on to drop everything and do my accounting for three days straight, but I could afford to set aside three hours a week to chip at the block.

But what would happen once I had caught up with the backlog? Three hours a week is way too much for accounting (even if you add on invoicing and paying bills). I’d wanted to build a habit around accounting previously, but weekly seemed too often and monthly… well, monthly is just too abstract. The rhythm in my life is weeks and seasons. Months only exist in the calendar.

I decided that I would use any leftover time in those three hours (once I was up-to-date) to work on a creative project – something I never feel like I can allow myself to do. I’m not there yet (2016 backlog now) but the idea is extremely motivating.

After this digression, about Morning Pages, habits, sticking to stuff, accounting, let’s get back to blogging. My success with accounting is encouraging me to try to convert other things to a “weekly habit”. Things like blogging. I’d like to make it daily, of course, but let’s be real. If I were writing one or two posts a week regularly I’d be a very happy blogger. And I’m pretty sure that writing more often would encourage me to write shorter posts. (Sorry. And thanks if you’re still reading me.)

So that is my second idea. I don’t have the solution yet, but I’ve been tossing ideas around (during my Morning Pages mainly). Should I blog in the morning or at the end of the workday? End seems more logical, but by the end of the day I am generally spent. Plus I often have stuff in the evenings (judo, workshops, conferences, board meetings, you name it).

I have thought of stopping work at 5pm and blogging then on the days I don’t have to leave. But today, right now, writing this blog post, I think I should follow the lead of my accounting success and firewall a 9-12 for my blog. I have a backlog of things to do like import my old Open Ears posts, cross-post my newsletters, etc. – more than enough to keep me busy for whatever time is left once I’ve finished writing. It’ll also give me a slot to catch up with my week-end newsletters if I’m running late, as I often am.

See, this is one of the reasons I blog. Like so many other long-running bloggers, I do it because it helps me think. And if in the process it can help somebody else or simply be of interest, all the better!

So Many Failed Fittings [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

Again and again, when I talk about my hearing loss and my role as Open Ears editor, people tell me about their relative, acquaintance, or friend who has hearing loss of some degree, got hearing aids, but never wears them. This is a well-known problem in the industry, of course. I haven’t done checking out the existing research on the topic, but after an umpteenth discussion — and a failed fitting in my history — I do have a few thoughts to share.

If I go back to my personal experience, there was a major difference between my first (failed) fitting and the one that got me wearing hearing aids on a daily basis three years ago: the first time, I was sent home with “perfectly tuned” hearing aids and that was it. In my memory (though it might be failing me), no follow-up appointment. The second time, I was sent home with barely amplified hearing aids and clear follow-up instructions.

Of course there are other differences. I was 13 at the time, 25 years older at my most recent fitting. Technology had evolved. I’d had time to accept the fact I have hearing loss. As a teenager, I was “told to go”, whereas as an adult, I made my own decision.

But I can’t help but think that sending newly fitted people home with hearing aids on “full blast” is a bad idea for a first fitting. Everything I know about habituation and resistance to change screams against doing that. Baby steps is usually what it takes for lasting change, rather than huge sweeping revolutions. Remember those new year resolutions you never keep? Yeah.

Have you been fitted with hearing aids that stayed in a drawer, or do you know somebody in that situation? I’m curious as to what other people’s hypotheses are regarding the reasons for all these failures, I have to say.

How I “Get” People to Talk to me so I Can Understand Them [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

A complaint I’ve heard a few times lately in the hearing loss support groups I hang out in is that “full-hearing” people resist making the effort to talk to us in such a way that we can understand them. Or they do sometimes, but then forget. I feel a lot of frustration around this for some people, sometimes translated into judgements about the other “not caring” or “not paying attention” or “being offended”.

Misunderstanding

This reminds me a little, in a “through the looking-glass” way, of how we “less-hearing” people are sometimes accused of “not paying attention”, “not making an effort”, or “being distracted”.

I try to always look at situations like this from the various points of view of the players involved. My work with people and technology, as well as teaching, have led me to adopt a kind of “user-experience-centric” attitude. Now, UX is definitely not my primary field of expertise (so forgive me in advance if it’s yours), but one thing I do quite consistently is try and put myself in other people’s shoes and see the logic in their way of thinking or doing things.

How does this apply here? What does it look like for people with full hearing who are trying to communicate with me?

People have communication habits. Volume of speech, but also, they know from experience when they can be heard or not, at what distance conversation becomes impossible. Most people being “well-hearing” (I kind of like that expression), their communication habits are adapted to people without hearing loss. Years ago, a friend of mine commented (when I said that I didn’t seem to have too much trouble understanding people) that everyone around me made efforts when speaking with me, but that I didn’t see it. They subconsciously spoke louder, learned to get my attention before saying something, etc. It was a bit of a shock for me. But it made sense. (This was before I got fitted.)

So, basically, when we have hearing loss, we’re requiring of people around us that they communicate differently with us, and break their deeply ingrained habits of speech for us. They need to learn and remember that they need to speak to us from distance x < “standard intelligible conversation distance”, for example. Or they need to remember not to speak to us when we’re not looking. Or when we’re in another room. Or too softly. All these things that “work” with almost everyone they know do not work as well with us. They’re used to talking to other neighbours from their balcony or across the street, but that’s too far for us.

I try to keep this in mind. I approach it like training. It’s my responsibility to teach them what works and doesn’t work with me, communication-wise. And sometimes spelling things out is really useful.

I usually take a moment at some point to tell “new people” that I don’t hear well, and that even with my hearing aids I might ask them to repeat stuff if they are looking away from me or in another room. If I’m without my hearing aids, I tell people.

I know they are going to forget even if they don’t intend to, and it’s never pleasant to be reminded that you forgot to do something that is necessary for somebody else. So even though it’s not my fault I have hearing loss and I don’t have to apologise for it, it’s not their fault either and I am asking them to do something out-of-their-ordinary to accommodate my particular circumstances. That’s why I often apologise when I ask people to repeat things (not systematically, but at least a few times in the beginning). I’ve never seen anybody be offended that I’m asking them to repeat. I’ve seen confusion when they repeat and I still can’t hear, irritation maybe at being asked again and again to repeat, or at failing to communicate.

When that happens, I try to give people clearer instructions: for example, I say “for me to understand you easily, get my attention first so that I can look at you” or “if you’re this far from me I probably won’t understand” or “if you’re in another room I probably won’t either”. Or “I’m sorry, even with my hearing aids in my hearing isn’t as good as yours, you need to speak louder for me to be able to understand you.”

I need them to do things differently for me, but if I don’t tell them clearly what it is they need to do, and if I don’t patiently give them feedback, they can’t guess.

How do you deal with this? I think strategies are going to vary a lot depending on the degree of hearing loss we have.

Depending on my Hearing Aids [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

With the early days of hearing aid wonder hearing behind me, I sometimes find myself forgetting them. The other day, it happened again. I left home and realised just in time that I didn’t have my ears with me.

I blame my morning shower. I have to wait until my ears are completely dry to put my hearing aids in. By that time I’m up and about and out of my “waking up and getting started” routine. What is the best solution to this? I definitely haven’t found it yet.

As I live alone, I rarely wear my hearing aids in my flat. I did during the first months though, to help my brain get used to them. And when I’m in public transport, I’m often listening to podcasts with my earbuds in — not physically compatible with having hearing aids in your ears too. So I don’t put them in each time I leave the flat, either.

Each time I catch myself leaving home without my hearing aids in my handbag, I turn back with this sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t realised I was missing them. Today, the thought of teaching a class, giving a talk, having a meeting or just coffee with a friend without my hearing aids feels like an impossible mission. It almost makes me panicky to think about it. I find myself wondering how I ever managed to do without (and so, so much!) for so long.

It makes sense, though. My brain is “less trained” in compensating my hearing loss. I have less practice. And so, when I do have to compensate like I used to, I struggle much more.

When I was in India last year, one of my hearing aids escaped my fingers as I was taking it out of its box, and it dropped to the floor. When I put it in my ear and turned it on, it was dead.

Heck. Cold sweat.

I had three weeks of travel left. I ended up FedExing the broken hearing aid to my audiologist in Switzerland, who changed a component, and FedExed it back to me. India being India, the whole thing took about 10 days. But at least I had two hearing aids for the end of my stay. Those 10 days when I had to manage with only one hearing aid were terribly annoying and frustrating. I really felt handicapped.

Every now and again, I go “naked ears”. I chat with my neighbour without my hearing aids. Yup, I can still have a conversation. That’s reassuring. It feels a bit muffled, but I can still understand what she says. When I’m looking at her. When she’s facing me. Because she speaks rather loudly and clearly. And then she says something to me with her back turned, or in a lower voice, or over noise, and I remember why I love my hearing aids, and rather than feeling dependent, I feel grateful for them.

Third Back to Blogging Challenge [en]

[fr] 10 jours, 10 articles, histoire de relancer la machine à bloguer. Qui se lance avec moi?

Starting Monday, I’m going to blog daily ten days in a row to kick the blogging machine into gear again. Who else is in?

Seems I need a periodical reboot. As you can see I’ve written a few blog posts recently after a terrible dry spell. What happened?

After the success of the second Back to Blogging Challenge, I kicked off the Blogging Tribe Experiment, went sailing in Spain (which put a serious dent in my blogging habit), came back to a lot of work and orphan kittens, which ended up spending 5 weeks with me and only left for their final homes last Thursday. (Yes, I have hundreds of kitten photos and videos to process, now.)

So, I feel like I’ve “failed” the Blogging Tribe Experiment, personally, because I didn’t blog anywhere close to what I intended — or as regularly as I would have expected from the tribe members. So, while we figure out where and how to take this experiment forward, I need a little structure in rekindling my blogging habit. It really is a habit.

Edit 24.06.2013: thanks to Luca, I’ve discovered Twitter widgets. Check out the latest posts from the challengers here!

Tweets about “#back2blog”
//

Exercise: Anything Better Than Nothing [en]

[fr] Côté sport et exercice, n'importe quoi est mieux que rien du tout. Du coup, pour reprendre ma bonne habitude de vélo, je m'y remets avec des tranches de 15 minutes (30 ça me paraît décourageant juste là). Ce n'est pas assez, mais c'est mieux que rien.

In summer 2009 I bought an exercise bike. I have heart valve prolapse (no panic, nothing really alarming, had it all my life) so my endurance is naturally bad, and some irregular judo training is absolutely not enough to compensate for my sedentary lifestyle and increasing age (I’m not 20 anymore and I’m starting to see it).

Cardiologist’s instructions: 20 minutes a day (30 seems better) at 125-135 or so (that’s for me, varies with age). I’ve exercised pretty regularly since then, but I regularly fall off the wagon, sometimes for months on end. Between Bagha’s death and India for example, I hadn’t sat on it much since mid-December before I clambered back on the wagon a few days ago.

We all know that getting back on the wagon is always difficult — whatever the wagon. What helped me here? Realising that in the case of exercise, anything is always better than nothing. So instead of trying to do my whole routine immediately (which includes 150 ab crunches of various varieties, stretching, a yoga exercise, “gainage“, and 30 minutes on the bike) I decided to just start with 15 minutes on the bike and 50 abs. In the spirit of what I learned reading 6changes, I’m first getting back into the habit of exercising — nevermind if I’m not really doing as much as I should be doing. That’ll come later.

So, if you’re not exercising and feeling guilty about it, start with something easy. Get into a routine of doing some exercise every day. Whatever you do will be better than nothing.

I think a big mistake people make when they decide that they need to start exercising is that they try to do too much too quickly, hence falling victim to New Year Resolution Syndrome.

You’re going to fall off the wagon. The most important question to answer is: when you do, how will you climb back on? Take it easy.

And remember: just walking ten minutes a day is better than not moving at all — even if in an ideal world you should be doing 30 minutes of exercise a day.

How Will CoComment Change Our Commenting Habits? [en]

I was [really excited to be able to talk about coComment yesterday](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/04/cocomment-enfin-public/ “The very beginnings of coComment and my small part in the whole adventure.”) Saturday night, and I really think it’s a great service, but I never thought it would [pick up as fast as it did](http://www.cocomment.com/teamblog/?p=15). As I heard Robert saying at LIFT, the blogosphere is not about how many people read you, but about who does, and how things scale and can get out of hand once the masses get hold of them.

[CoComment](http://cocomment.com/) is already changing the way I [participate in comments](http://www.cocomment.com/comments/steph “See where and what I’ve been talking besides on my blogs.”) (conversations!) on other blogs. I feel more connected. I feel like it makes more sense to leave a comment on a blog I scarcely visit, because it’s not a message in a bottle anymore: I have an easy way to get back to it. CoComment makes my activity on other blogs visible, so it encourages me to be active (yeah, that’s how I am! I like the spotlights, didn’t they tell you?) and maybe more conversational.

On the other hand, this is what I see coming: more popularity for popular blogs or posts or commenters (coComment will amplify the [feedback loop effect](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/05/visibility-is-in-feedback-loops/) for comments). Easy [celeb’ stalking](http://www.cocomment.com/comments/scobleizer “Want to see where Robert Scoble is commenting now?”). Maybe more self-consciousness about “where I comment” and “what I comment”? Comments by [top commenters](http://www.cocomment.com/ “Box on the left. I’m in there because I’m a bit obsessive and this is the beginning, but I’ll soon drop out, no fear.”) will have a different weight on your blog, and different consequences, because they’ll get a different visibility. A-lister X’s comment on a lowly blog may have gone unnoticed until now, but if they use coComment, it won’t anymore. Will we start signing out of coComment to retain privacy over a certain amounts of comments we make, and that we don’t want in the public eye?

I’m really happy to see coComment gaining so much popularity. I’m just a bit worried. Is this too much success/visibility to soon? I’ve seen people (gently) bitching around already about what a shame it was that coComment did not support all blog platforms, or that it only tracked comments by coCommenters. Laurent says he’s [pushing to open it up on Monday night](http://www.ballpark.ch/blog/english/514/follow-cocomment), but I wonder: is it really a good idea? What are the risks involved? What has the most potential for damage: frustrating people because they can’t yet be “part of it”, or not being able to manage the scaling, user feedback, and user expectations for a public service?

I know I’m a worry-bug, and Laurent and Nicolas are smart and know the insides of the service much better than I do — so I’ll just go and prepare my stuff for school and worry about useful things for my life just now (like, what am I going to teach this morning). All the same, guys: “Soyez prudents!”

Night Jewellery [en]

An express survey for the readers of this weblog.

[fr] Chers amis lecteurs, retirez-vous votre quincaillerie (comprenez: "vos bijoux si vous en avez") pour dormir?

Do you remove all your jewellery at night, dear readers? (If you wear any daily, that is…)

I personally don’t, and I was talking with a friend yesterday who found that surprising.

Tag: habit

Nearly a Week With Less Facebook [en]

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So Many Failed Fittings [en]

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How I “Get” People to Talk to me so I Can Understand Them [en]

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Depending on my Hearing Aids [en]

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Exercise: Anything Better Than Nothing [en]

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How Will CoComment Change Our Commenting Habits? [en]

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Night Jewellery [en]

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