Real Talk 3: Accountability

Part 3 in a series.  I've employed some practices, and have had some things on my mind, that I'm really excited about, and I'd like to share them here.  Not all directly food- nor LA-related, though food certainly weaves through these stories.  I'm calling it Real Talk, though in a less lofty moment, I could just as well have called it Better Living Through Google Docs.

Real Talk 1: Gratitude
Real Talk 2: Mindfulness

Guys, it's mid-January.  That greyish time when already, we start feeling the wearing of the newness. We use all the tools we have: denial, active resistance, sheer force of will, to try to get it back. Now, I come into 2015 with optimism. I have some lofty goals for the year (more on that later.  maybe.), and one actually reasonable one, involving friluftsliv (who's in?), but as much as I love that fresh, invincible resolve of the first days of January, resolutions themselves have always felt a little flimsy to me.

Fortunately, I have a secret weapon.  At the start of 2012, feeling a little boxed in by the strict declarativeness of resolutions, I figured out an alternative that works for me.  I'd like to talk to you today about a little something I call the Hour of Power.

My issues with the old way of dealing with resolutions stem not just from their lack of fluidity, but from the lack of accountability.  I am notorious for not finishing what I start, and it frustrates me endlessly.  I'm more interested in a way to keep tabs on things I want to achieve as they arise throughout the year, rather than coming up with a few simple resolutions in one day.

So, I've come up with a system with two simple components.  First, I decided to schedule a weekly meeting with myself.  I schedule in an distraction-free hour, every Wednesday from 8:30-9:30, which is devoted completely to the second item, The List.

The List. Ah, the list. The list is everything. The list, as they say, is life.*  The core of this practice is a list, contained in the cloud, accessible at all times, with everything in it. This includes grand plans and visions, as well as mundane to-dos. The key to the List is to update it the moment you remember something.  No need, at that time, to go into detail, but jot down the item.  I started my list in Google Docs, but last year moved it to a site called Workflowy,  which I love.  It's just a few seemingly simple tweaks away from a text file, but perfect ones.  I recommend it.

The Hour of Power. My meeting with myself.  These are the grounds. Each is crucial:

 - Use a different chair.  I do most of my computering on the couch.  A messy morass of Facebook, Sporcle, IM, all the distractions, every night.  The Hour is special, and requires a shift in environment. I spend it on an armchair that's slightly less comfortable.  Play music if you want; pour yourself a cup of hot tea.  Remove yourself from children and other distracting people, and shut the door**.
 - Open a new browser window.  It's impossible to plan life, for me anyway, without the internet.  But for the Hour, I minimize all the nagging tabs, log out of IM, and start clean.  This window will have just a few tabs: The List, my calendar, email, and maybe a couple others as necessary.  I'm mindful to not get sucked into a wormhole though.  Discipline.
 - Go through the list.  Address each item.  If something needs fleshing out, add subtasks.  Go into as crazily minute detail as you need.  If you're not sure where to start, come up with a baby step.  Consider talking to someone.  (And then of course, add talking to that someone to the list, and schedule it in.)
 - Get shit done.  If a task is to send an email, look up the hours for a business, find someone's mailing address, this is your time to do it.  Sometimes, in the time it would take to add an item to the list, you can just knock it out.
 - Schedule in first steps.  If a task can't be done immediately, schedule it. Need to make a phone call during business hours?  Put it in your calendar for 10am the next day.  Set an alarm.
 - Reward small victories.  Strike through things as you complete them. Bask for a moment.  Doesn't that feel great?
 - Reward large victories.  Maintain the list of complete tasks. With Workflowy, you can toggle hiding completed tasks.  With a regular doc, shift them to the bottom. But don't delete them. Look at them every once in a while.  You've accomplished so much.
 - Keep at it.  Keep. At. It.  And don't get discouraged.  Even the Great Wall of China is nothing but bricks.

I don't consider myself an organized person -- I was tagged a slacker early in life -- and it takes major effort for me to keep things from falling through the cracks on a regular basis.  But my little Hour of Power has been such an effective thing for me.  I can't say that I accomplished every single thing I set out to do when I started this practice, because honestly that'd be impossible.  But I have accomplished a lot (so many strikethroughs!), I'm pinned to a path, and with every hour, every item, I'm making progress.

* I recognize the white-girl-problems nature of using a line from a Holocaust movie to describe my self-organization method.  But after years of saying it to, and hearing it from, a friend for whom The List is the closest thing to religion, the phrase has had its original meaning hollowed out, and it's an important piece of our shorthand.
** Yeah, right, parents of small children are gonna be able to get an hour of uninterrupted time to themselves.  I know, super challenging. But I feel like parents are superheroes of efficiency and could actually knock this out in 30 minutes.

Real Talk 2: Mindfulness

Part 2 in a series.  I've employed some practices, and have had some things on my mind, that I'm really excited about, and I'd like to share them here.  Not all directly food- nor LA-related, though food certainly weaves through these stories.  I'm calling it Real Talk, though in a less lofty moment, I could just as well have called it Better Living Through Google Docs.

Real Talk 1: Gratitude

I have a system.  Some might think of it as a burden, others as having 'an unhealthy relationship with food', others as a compromise to spontaneity.  It may seem insane to you, but I'm sticking to it.



I'm talking about meal tracking.  I've done it on and off over the last couple years, and I finally decided earlier this year that I'm going to do it forever.  Every Sunday night, I create a list for the week -- every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack is planned out in a Google doc.  Every Friday night, I do the same for the weekend.  Then after every meal, I stop back in to the doc, check off each thing I ate and add any items I hadn't planned.

I know it sounds like such a mundane and unsexy thing, but the effect of this practice on my life has been so profound that I don't ever want to stop.  Now, this isn't about weight management, but something more.  For one thing, what you eat is what makes you:  it's absolutely true that we are what we eat.  And there's nothing unsexy about taking great care of your body.  But beyond that, it's about keeping my wits about me.  There are so many messages surrounding us to eat all the time.  Every billboard, every coworker's birthday cake, every networking date, and dating date, every note of that movie theater popcorn jingle.  At five feet tall, I happen to be especially little, so the portions being pushed on me just do not fit my life at all.  There's pressure to feed -- a lot, but rarely to nourish.

When I track, I cook.  And when I have a moment to plan ahead this way, I end up cooking healthy, balanced meals.  This adds value (and order) to my time at home, makes it a moment to recharge, and provides that elusive nourishment, in more ways than one.

Here's the thing: as much as I love food (and we all know, I lerrve food), I've realized that I can't really enjoy it without occasionally being hungry.  And yet, I go through stages where I just eat whatever's in front of me, non-stop, without too much regard for nutrition, balance, or even taste.  Lunchtime comes around, and I don't even have appetite, but I shovel it in anyway.  I hate those times.

And I mean, do I still eat crap?  Sometimes.  And then I end up feeling gross for having done it.  This is why I do the slow stuff.  This is why I meal track.   I love food -- and eating mindlessly makes me love it less.  So, if I can prevent that, in about 3 minutes a day, why not?

Now, you don't have to be a meticulous crazypants about it like I am.  But if you do want to be a meticulous crazypants, which in this case I encourage, I've laid out the details of my system below.  It looks complicated, but I use 2 templates -- one for the week, and one for weekends -- in Google Docs, and employ the 'Make a Copy' function, so much of it's already filled in.  The planning may take about ten minutes, because I have to figure out what I'm eating for the whole week, but then for the rest of the week, tracking (with my own little language of markings) literally does takes less than 3 minutes a day.

Tracking what I eat prevents that hungerless zombie state, and gives me a fighting chance against the constant eat-eat-eat pressure.  All these things vying for our attention (and our appetite) rob us of the opportunity to do what we really want to do.  And so, these little practices that shake us out of the drone state may slow us down a bit, but they help us fight those forces.  These habits and wake-up calls add up to mindfulness, and they help us win.

Real Talk 1: Gratitude

This post is the first in a small series.  I've employed some practices, and have had some things on my mind, that I'm really excited about, and I'd like to share them here.  Not all directly food- nor LA-related, though food certainly weaves through these stories.  I'm calling it Real Talk, though in a less lofty moment, I could just as well have called it Better Living Through Google Docs.   Here we go.

I've been hearing people talk about gratitude a lot lately.  I think this bodes well for society (or whatever overeducated, overprivileged, over-yoga'ed, over-TED-talked corner of society I happen to run in).  We're rising above the mundane.  We're working on big ideas.

Gratitude has been a theme on this blog since the early days.  Some moments I had it, and with good reason.  Some days I struggled to get it back, remembering how overflowingly amazing those moments felt.

As we moved into 2014, I kept catching wind of people intentionally taking time to write down things they were grateful for.  Diana talked often about how jotting down a few things she was grateful at the end of each day helped her keep perspective in the rocky year that followed a pretty brutal breakup.  Chris shared lists on Facebook throughout Thanksgiving day -- of writers, food people, community leaders -- closing each with the simple hashtag "thankful".  His lists resonated and made me thankful, too.  Gabe felt the power of practicing gratitude as he navigated the shaky waters of moving across the country, quitting his job, and finding his own way.

And then there was Danielle, a person whose wise words have seen me through some rocky days of my own.  At the start of 2014, she looked back on a year that included a new husband, a new career, and baby Oliver, born on Thanksgiving day, and she tied these riches to her own gratitude practice, which she started two years back: "I don't mean to suggest that I believe being grateful can get me what I want, but rather that I can see that being grateful deepened my capacity for joy, helping me to allow in people and events that I would have felt undeserving of before."

Compelling.  So I tried it.  Google Doc.  A few items a night.  It's awesome.  And takes like 30 seconds.   I started off 2014 in amazing spirits, mostly because I was so incredibly happy that no-good, very bad, awful 2013 was over (though I could easily talk about the many profound ways in which that terrible year was in fact, great).  My year has been rich so far:  so many wonderful moments.  I do believe that taking a second to remember this every day has kept me on a path of happiness.  I'm excited to see where it leads.

I'm going to leave you with some highlights from the last couple months of gratitude.  After all this lofty talk, you should probably know how inane this list can be.  Don't judge.

1. naps.  naps.  naps.
2. there is a werewolf howling outside right now. i am inside.
3. dates, even bad dates, are funny.
4. health!  yaaaaayyyy!
5. the good feeling of actually being in my city. i love walking.
6. so so so so thankful that mom and dad have each other.  my god.
7. i took a dive, and it totally paid off.
8. the fb page and how wonderful it keeps getting.
9. beyonce.
10. in a minute i’m going to the trails cafe, where there is free wifi.  in the woods.
11. my friends are amazing.  they are all so smart, and introspective, and involved, and supportive, and understanding, and interested.  amazing amazing.
12. avocado on wheat toast with a farmer’s market fried egg, flaky salt, and tapatio.
13. cousins.
14. the deliciousness of kogi everything, and the fact that we can have kogi and chego anytime we want.  it’s better than having like, the mona lisa, or the sagrada familia.
15. my poor sister, who listens to me whine all the time.
16. the awesome current hair sitch.
17. time bank.  serendipity.  the glory of LA.  echo park lake.
18. that carolyn is ok, and that takashi is so cute and squishy.
19. going out, but then coming home.

Do you have any gratitude practices?  I'd love to hear about them.