Best Tips, Tricks, Life-hacks I've Found
There’s a whole sub-genre of the internet dedicated to productivity and How To Tie Your Shoes Like the Pros!! kind of articles. Much of it is silly and wasteful or pedantic and unrealistic, but every once in a while, I’ll stumble across something, either from a friend, or on the web, or in an old book, and it will make a tangible difference in my workflow or in my life.
I’m always reading about some way of doing things better, faster, more efficiently, much as my millennial students are doing, apparently. There’s a whole sub-genre of the internet dedicated to productivity and How To Tie Your Shoes Like the Pros!! kind of articles. Much of it is silly and wasteful or pedantic and unrealistic, but every once in a while, I’ll stumble across something, either from a friend, or on the web, or in an old book, and it will make a tangible difference in my workflow or in my life. Here are some of the changes I’ve made in the last decade or so that have helped more than I would’ve expected.
Wool Socks
Wool socks are the best. It’s the material that socks are supposed to be made from and I had been living a kind of half-life ensconced in cotton until I discovered the true way. They last forever (literally: many companies that produce them offer lifetime guarantees) and they’re dry, don’t loose their shape, don’t stain, and feel not just neutral but actively comfortable all day long. I got one pair for Christmas and found that I was looking forward to their being clean so I could wear them again. Slowly, I replaced nearly all my daily and dress socks with wool versions. It’s weird to get so much joy from something so mundane, but there it is. I’m three years or so into my conversion and still on fire.
KonMari Method
This is the silly name for the way that Marie Kondo folds clothes. I read her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and it was fun but it didn’t change my life. Now, there’s a TV show about her helping other people clean up. But what did stick with me is the way she has of folding clothes so that they stand up on edge in one’s drawers. I do it with everything now and my dresser has never been so organized. I smile a little whenever I open it in the morning, sometimes running my hands over the perfect stacks admiring their uniformity and beauty. You can learn how to do it through a bunch of YouTube videos, but the book taught me just fine.
Safety Razors
I suffered under the Gillette empire for nearly 20 years before the revolution. They gave me, like they do all American males, a free MACH 3 for my 18th birthday and I used that thing, replacing the blades at $18 per pack every month for the next couple of decades. It’s actually a good product—I was a whiz with mine, smoothing the necessary surfaces with a few quick flicks that often inspired awe in onlookers—but they’re largely plastic (bad) and indecently expensive. I switched when a friend sent me a proper safety razor by Merkur. Now, blades cost around $1 for 5 of them, the handle has a heft that suggests a dignity of enterprise, and the thing rinse cleanly immediately and every time. It’s not only cheaper, but is a superior, if earlier, technology, which is not dominating the market only through suppression by better funded competitors.
Cold Showers
When I shower, I turn the water to cold—sometimes cold enough to shorten my breath—before getting out. It’s only for the last minute or two, but it makes a tremendous difference. I feel like I’ve just had a coffee, for one. For another, my clothes feel better against my body all day, for hours afterward. It takes a little getting used to, and it’s not intuitive, given how comforting warm showers can be, but the tightening, quickening, energizing effects are worth it.
Huel
Huel is like a protein powder, except it’s actually a complete food. It contains the requisite amount of fat, fiber, carbs, and protein person needs in a meal and is cheap (around $1.50 per serving) and vegetarian. The company is so environmentally conscious they don’t even include a plastic scoop in each new bag, trusting that you’ll have saved your scoop from the last one, like a responsible human being would. I love everything about it: the t-shirt they send, the typography on the package, even the free shaker that comes with the first order. People use it in all kinds of different ways—mixing in shakes, replacing breakfast—but for me, it’s just a terrific supplement.
So sometimes I’ll have toast and jam for breakfast. Of course, I know that 15g of carbs and 2g of fructose are not sufficient to power an adult male body, much less a mind, through the hours of morning, but I still do it because I haven’t purchased the appropriate meats and veggies, or because I don’t want to make and then clean up a mess. But now, I’ll make the toast and a shaker of Huel, with the confidence that my muscles, brain, tissues, etc are all humming along happily and the whole thing takes under 5 mins, from prep through cleanup. Physical and financial benefits are swell, but for me the peace of mind is best. I never wonder anymore whether my day is nutritionally complete. It is. If all I eat one day is a slice of pizza and an apple, that’s fine; I’ll just drink a steak and salad’s worth of Huel, rounding out the picture. If you want to try it, use this link and they’ll give you $10 off. (I’m not an affiliate or whatever, just a fan).
Physical Media
I listen to CD’s, having given up on vinyl a few years ago. It’s the best. I love finding great records (by which I mean “discs”) for $2 at the Goodwill, or flipping through the stacks at music shops. For better or for worse, most of the music I love was made in the 1990’s or early 00’s; most of it never pressed to vinyl. I love being reminded of what I’ve invested in and the convenience of playing music in my car without fiddling with my phone. I love the sound and shape and not having to wipe them down before every listen. I love not being beholden to a streaming service that can, at any time, decide to offer only re-mastered versions, or drop a label, or raise prices. Dancing around the house without worrying about skipping, or scratching, is just icing.
Bullet Journals
There are so many sites extolling the virtues of Bullet Journalling that I don’t feel like I need to outline the method here. Suffice it to say that it’s how I keep track of my appointments, projects, and days and it’s the only such system I’ve stuck with for any length of time. The best part is that it’s a system and not a product, so you don’t have to buy a new thing each year and aren’t beholden to a brand. That said, everyone knows that Shinola makes the most beautiful journals around but for some ridiculous reason, they don’t make a dot-grid format, which is essential for the method. That’s depressing, because it means thier ceding market share to lesser companies like Barton Fig, and a host of rip-offs. For now, the best one can do is to use Lechturm 1917, which are very decent; I’d even think them the gold-standard, had I never seen a Shinola, which skewed my expectations of what a journal could be.
Anglican Spirituality
I wondered whether to put this on here as a life-hack, since most will think of Anglicanism as a kind of religion, but I was already a Christian and always have been, and Anglicanism, in fact, has no distinct set of beliefs, but is rather a system, an organizing principle meant to give shape and structure to one’s spiritual life, so in a sense, it’s the only thing here that really is a life-hack. I have much more to say about these practices and probably will say them elsewhere, if not in other posts here, but for now I just want to note the comfort and efficacy of the system.
Basically, Anglicanism provides a few structures without which I’d been sprawling for most of my life. For example, in it, we do Morning and Evening Prayer. I used to think: am I going to pray this morning? I just did last night. Maybe kind-of on my way to work. And when I made time for it, I had to cast about wondering what to pray for. Myself? The trees? My family? Anglican practice settled all that with it’s scheduling and scripted prayers. I pray for much more that I used to, guided by the wisdom of centuries, and much more frequently than ever, since I’m not intimidated by the idea that I’ll have to come up with something to say.
The benefits extend to Bible reading also. Using the lectionary, I don’t have to come up with little studies like: maybe I’ll read around in the Psalms, then a study of Sovereignty as a concept. No, I now read the apportioned bit that takes me through most of the scriptures on a predictable cycle. I love it. I love the certainty of beliefs—that creedal Christianity guides the whole denomination and that it’s well and truly worldwide: I can find an Anglican church in any state or country I’ll ever find myself in and the values won’t really have changed place to place. I went to a low-church for years before discovering they baptized people multiple times (that’s a heresy). I went to another one where they didn’t believe in baptism at all! (that’s another one). It’s not so much the theological wrong-headedness of those positions but the fact that I didn’t know them going in; I couldn’t have known them, since they were just the whims of whoever was running the show.
There’s a reason why most denominations in America are shrinking down to 6-10 septuagenarians in a huge, beautiful building while the ACNA (which started 10 years ago) now has over a thousand churches in N. America alone. Part of it is the refusal to trade the Great Tradition for a post-1970’s revisionism and the provision of deep historical rooted-ness and truly global connection that refusal provides in these rootless and hyper-local times. Part is probably a barely-explicable move of the Spirit. But part is also just the plain good sense of it, that people like me have stumbled upon a bio-hack that lasts one’s entire life. It’s a terrific comfort, somehow, to know (I have a copy of it in my prayer-book) exactly what words will be spoken over my corpse when I become one, to know where to place my concentration during Advent, during Lent. For me, practicing Anglicanism, like the razors, like the socks, has been about recovering older wisdom and applying it to new idioms and finding life simpler, neater, and more fulfilling for the instruction.
Poet-Dad?
Eight months ago, I stopped writing poems. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just stopped happening, which was odd, since I’ve been writing poems pretty consistently since I was 15.
Eight months ago, I stopped writing poems. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just stopped happening, which was odd, since I’ve been writing poems pretty consistently since I was 15. People would ask “how are the poems coming,” (because I have good friends who like to keep me working) and I’d say I was taking a break after having completed a major cycle of translations. This is true, as I’ll explain in another post, but didn’t sound true when I said it. Did I need to catch my breath?
It wasn’t until earlier today, when reading Austin Kleon’s marvelous, encouraging second book, Show Your Work! that I realized what the problem was. Kleon writes about the birth of his son, and how some awful troll wrote in to taunt him about how now he’d get no work done, would quit being so optimistic and productive. He turned it into a work-lesson for the rest of us, which is what he does, but I read the parable on a literal level. Eight months ago, my daughter was born.
Even though everyone told me it was great, I never thought parenthood would be so rewarding and easy and fun. Our daughter is a joy, more of less morning to night, but her arrival did coincide with the end of meaningful work for me, as my teaching contract at the University of Washington ended, and my poems stopped arriving on the doorstep in ribboned baskets.
I know that other people go through this, new mothers and fathers giving up on passions they once held dear and I don’t want to become that way. I also know that making art is a choice, that it involves (often unglamorous) daily work, that parenthood adds a dimension of strict scheduling to those requirements. It’s a balance. I haven’t found it. That’s been hard for me.
But I have some encouragement in knowing others who have done it well. My heroes here are the poets Richard Kenney, and Matthew Neinow. I love Rick’s work, as I intimated in this letter that was published in Poetry Magazine. I knew him during his wife’s pregnancy, was there when he read “Pathetic Fallacy” (a kind of “Prayer for my Daughter”) just after she was born, and was a writer-in-residence on his Creative Writing in Rome program while she skipped around the Roman ruins. Through all that time, he was writing, daily. I saw it. It can happen. This year, his wife published a book of poems. I find it unbelievably encouraging.
Matt is the father of two young sons (at my last count) and he’s got three chapbooks out. We don’t know one another very well, but have read together from time to time. Somehow, while writing and raising his family, he has found time to become the winningest writer I know. Every year, Neinow wins a major cash award, including NEH, Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and many others. It’s amazing to see.
So, it can be done; I’ve just got to figure out how.
Why I'm Leaving Seattle pt. 2
I posted a partial list of reasons why I'm leaving Seattle, my long heart's home over here, and then I thought of another one. This is just one more reason: not because the gym matters so much, though I've gone there (albeit not a frequently as I ought to have done) since the first week I moved here, but because it's indicative of the type of changes--all for the worse, it seems to me--that businesses in the city keep making on both large and small scales.
My Gym Lost its Soul
For ten years, I've been a member of Rain Fitness. It's the most beautiful gym I've ever seen, though, it should be noted, I'm no connoisseur thereof. There are 3/4 length windows looking out over Elliott Bay, past a stand of aspens on a little rounded hilltop that might have been arranged by the Olmsteads. When treading the mill, the weary animal gets a view at least: ferry traffic, seagulls, the play of light on water. Moreover, the machines are fitted with brown leather that accents the gorgeous 100-year old wood floors. I loved it. In the last few years though, they've made a number of changes, all for the worse. To wit:
They bolted the windows shut
I don't know from what sick impulse this decision springs, but it likely has to do with saving a few cents in heating costs (which they have to make up for in electricity costs since now the fans are always on). Remember the sea view I was talking about? That means we used to get sea breezes. There is a reason every health spa used to be built on the ocean: the very air itself is restorative. A tinge of salt, the smell of salmon running, brought a feeling of freshness to a place that might otherwise smell like a gym sock. One day, every opening window in the place was bolted shut. Now we have canned air (there never seems to be enough) and constantly-rotating ceiling fans, that make the place feel dry and irritating to glistening skin.
They got rid of the tanning bed
Some might cheer this decision, since overuse of tanning beds is linked in some specious studies to skin cancer in the leathered elderly, but after a few months of a Seattle winter, 10 minutes in a warm place and a little light therapy went a long way toward spiking the serotonin levels and creating a sense of well-being. One day, it was gone and the space turned into a windowless office, which seems an odd exchange.
They reduced the space by half
I understand about economic downturns and all that, but in a rent-saving move, the gym cut-off an entire room downstairs full of equipment, which was, incidentally, the stuff I used most. Gone the stretching area; gone the chin-up station. Meanwhile, they also dropped the number of classes by about 40%. Now there is one evening class most nights, rather than the bounty we once had.
They built a second location
This would be fine by itself, but they didn't invite us. Isn't the main benefit of having a chain that customers can visit several links thereof? I was thrilled when I heard they were opening another Rain Fitness in South Lake Union, closer to my house, until I heard--had I heard that right?--that members couldn't go to whichever was most convenient, couldn't mix-it-up once in awhile for the sake of variety, but had to attend the gym they signed up in. Surely for a fee? I questioned. Oh yes, but not a small one, like the $5.00 a month it should have been, but for effectively twice the rate, which rather defeats the purpose.
They re-branded
Importantly, most of these awful changes occurred under the original management structure, who deserves the blame, but just last week, as a kind of icing on the putrid cake, they "brought in some investment partners" who have stricken the cool and sensible "Rain Fitness" (we are in Seattle, after all) and dubbed the place "Soul Fitness." What does that even mean? Is it a temple now? Are there lectures in ethics? Gyms are exactly the opposite of "soul." They could have just gone with "Body Fitness," which, if unoriginal, would at least have described the function of the place.
Anyway, it's stupid: the bellicosity of their financial policies, the way the desk people never know whether to greet people coming in or not, the fact that they don't give or rent out towels for people who have to go to work following their session and don't want a wet towel in the car all day.
And it's one of the reasons I'm getting out of here.
Why I'm Leaving Seattle
My wife wrote a much more moving elegy about our time in Seattle here, but we deal with loss differently, and my mode has a touch of the grape fox.
I've never loved a city the way I love Seattle. I read books about it, most of them excellent, like those below (to name just a very few). I buy her music; I read her poets, I patronize her theaters and I tell everyone I know how great she is. And she is. But I'm leaving. Here's why:
My friends left
Not all of them, mind you, but ones I liked having around. Weirdly,
- Nancy
- Matt
- Brian
- Amber
- Jeff
- Nhadira, and
- Devorah
all left within a year of one another. There are some super people still here, obviously, but this exodus really took something out of my social circle.
We had the best bookstore in the world and now we don't
The closure of the Elliot Bay Book Company ripped the heart right out of the city for me. Sure, it moved to Capitol Hill, and has spearheaded a revival of that already-flourishing area, but not only is the new location not the same, it's not as good. Gone are the meandering paths, the human-scaled rooms. Gone the sense of discovery. It is still a very well-curated bookstore, but the building isn't half so winsome, the neighborhood not so fun to walk around, the used book section removed, the reading room louder, and on and on, ad nauseum.
Sure, we still have Wessel and Lieberman (now the best bookstore in the city, for my money) but it too has shrunk from it's original light-filled space on First Avenue to the hind quarters of same. And we'll always have the Magus, headquarters of the surly, dismissive help, and even little places I love like Mercer Street Books, but the Mecca, the flagship, the anchor of civic literary culture dried up all but completely.
My favorite coffee shops changed hands
Muse. There and not.
I used to know the owner of the place I frequented most (in walking distance to my house), the Muse Coffee Co. He was friendly and cool and made great coffee. It was a neighborhood joint, and one of my de facto offices. About two years ago, he sold it to a guy who had never worked in coffee before. I was there when the previous owner showed the new owner how to make an espresso for the first time. He's probably a good guy, but he doesn't seem to like people much. It's a depressing place to be anymore: nearly always empty, and always glum. The coffee isn't anywhere near as good and neither is the atmosphere.
One year later, the same thing happened at my second-most-frequented place: Cafe Zingaro. The previous owner, who was a joy to be around and who made everyone feel at home, left. With her, half the patrons left too, who don't appreciate shouted from the till a corporate, overly-theatrical "How can I help you?" upon entry.
And now my bet for Best Coffee in the City, Bauhaus is closing and re-opening somehwere else. Whatever.
The record store in my neighborhood became a Chase bank
R.I.P. Easy Street Records. You were one of my favorite places in the world.
The city cancelled my bus route
It now seriously takes me one hour door-to-door to traverse the 5.5 miles to the University of Washington on the newly created route #31. That is insane, especially given that an express (the #45), which only ran three times in the morning and therefore couldn't have cost the city much, used to make the trip in 15 minutes flat.
My church exploded
This I won't say much about, because I disapprove of many people's new favorite pasttime: Hating on Churches, but I used to belong to an edgy church that met in a warehouse and had great music. Now it is a multi-site conglomerate of 15 campuses across 5 states, that runs on video simulcasts, which I think is terrible aesthetically, but also socially, since there are so many people ready and willing to serve as leaders of those churches instead.
That's all for now, not because I'm out of reasons, but because I'm tired of typing. Also because I have to pack. I'm sailing on.
What it's Like Living in a 500-year-old Building
When my wife and I first moved to Germany, we thought we might live in Stuttgart, the main metropolis in Baden-Wurttemberg, and that I would commute to Tuebingen to teach classes. Once we saw the sleepy, lovely, medieval college-town of Tuebingen though, we knew immediately that it would make a better home base. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to have had the same idea and so the small town was experiencing an unprecedented housing shortage. Students literally dropped out of the University because they couldn't find a place to live.
After a few (very expensive) days in a University Guest House, during which we tried to figure out a) the German housing market b) the German phone system--note: you can't just put coins in and make calls--and c) the locker-rental scheme at the train station, which held all our worldly belongings, including, interestingly, Amber's guitar, we found a half-timbered building directly on the Neckar river facing the park. Built in 1478.
It was beautiful: perfectly-located about a mile from my offices and directly above a bakery. It was also the filthiest place I've ever seen. The man showing it to us cringed when we said we'd take it. "Really?" he asked, incredulous. Imagine Mrs. Havisham's place from
Great Expectations
and you more or less have it. The house hadn't seen a broom since the 1970's, from which era there were (and are) piles of magazines to attest to the proprietor's war on hygienic living.
We cleaned for days. We threw things out with righteous zeal.
We put furniture in the attic, for which we were later reprimanded, and pulled down others and dusted, rolled, tipped, stored, piled and otherwise organized where we could, holding everything in pinched fingers as if it might be contagious. It's one of the more disgusting projects I've been a part of, and I'm saying this as a former part-time janitor at an elementary school, who knows whereof he speaks.
Everything slants at whimsical angles; there are splints holding up every furnishing that isn't nailed to the sometime floor. The wiring is mostly electrical tape and the lighting (who plans ahead for lighting in the 15th century?) bare bulbs hanging from strings. Some of the installation is crumpled up paper sacks from the grocery, which I know because I thought of pulling one down in one of my more zealous fits. None of this would matter, of couse, had the place been decently cared-for, which finally--the house creaks like mad, but can it sigh in relief?--for this year at least, it will be.
The effort was worth it. We now have a charming flat in the center of town in a building that's literally post-card perfect; it is featured in every advertisement for the town of Tuebingen, and has come quite a way in these last months, now a serene escape along the river's bend from whose windows we watch swans and tourists, the latter pointing their cameras at our half-timbered tumble-down home.
After:
