The Column

Motto: Right about now, the funk's your brother. Several years ago I was asked the question "What would you do if you were given a year to do anything you wanted and you didn't have to worry about money?" Before I go on, I want to comment that doing that a wonderful thought exercise and I highly suggest you answer that question for yourself. MY answer was something along the lines of "split that year up into six 2-month sections, spend each of those 2 months operating in an entirely different mode. Live in different parts of the country/world, work different jobs, take up different hobbies. I was and still am satisfied with this answer. I bring up this thought experiment I did because it just occurred to me that my 30 Day Challenges are like miniature versions of that same idea. Every month I'm intentionally exploring new habits and, to a lesser extent, new places. Making that connection was a bit of "aha!" moment. I thought that was cool. ...

Motto: You Can Never Achieve Perfection, You Can Only Get Closer Transitional periods are difficult. Nothing will mess up your daily routines like knowing they will be changing soon. Since Melissa and I signed a lease on a new place, we've up-ended the usual routine. I look forward to moving not only because our new place will be much nicer than our current one, but also because it means we're hitting the reset button on a lot of things. We're starting from scratch. Establishing new habits. I'm a huge proponent of setting up healthy habits when you first enter a new environment. I think location drives behavior moreso than any other factor. A review of February's "30" day challenge: No TV No Videogames (except on Thursdays) We did a great job of abiding by this rule until about halfway though the month. Then we started taking additional cheat days. By the end, the goal may has well have said "slightly less TV and videogames". I'm ...

Motto: This Turned Out Longer than I Expected Conventions that make no sense bug me. 10 pm 11 pm 12 am 1 am 2 am Why does am/pm switch over before the numbers switch over? Why not simultaneously? Why do we start the day with an hour named "12", then go to 1? I'll tell you why. It's because people are dumb, and dumb people wouldn't understand a "0" hour. Here's another, very confusing convention: 2/25/2015 It's the 25th of February in the year 2015. Why do we go (medium length), (short) (long)? That makes no sense. You can't sort by year. It's hard to parse out the day on which something happens. Why is it not 25/2/2015? Or, better yet, 2015/2/25? The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created a convention for date and time: 2015-02-25 T21:00-06 2015, February 25th, at 9pm, 6 hours behind UTC. It's a perfectly self-contained, absolute time reference. Why can't we use this? It...