Practice Session #15

Thanks for checking out my show notes! I’ll be utilizing this to clarify and elaborate on points that I didn’t convey as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

We record these weekly sessions on Sundays. Please note that I try to publish episodes the day after recording: Mondays. I generally will have the transcript and initial notes published on Mondays as well. From there, I may continue adding and modifying the show notes throughout the week.

I’ll be interspersing all my notes with the transcription from the audio, which will be displayed like this:

Intro.

[00:01:10]

CK: Okay.

Okay. Here we go.

Heyo! I’m CK and you’re listening to Practice. This is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. I’m using this platform to practice podcasting as well as speaking in general, while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m fortunate to be joined along with my practice partner, and partner in life, and pattern awareness manager: Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me!

CK: And every week, we’ll be talking about my progress with this practice, as well as various lifestyle practices, and the virtues of practice itself.

And today it is May- no it’s June! Holy coow! June 7th, 2020.

And was last week’s episode on June 1st then? Or May 31st?

Pam: I think it was May 31st.

CK: Okay, because I don’t remember saying “June” on the podcast before.

Yeah, anyway… Yeah, we’re losing track of days over here.

Let’s catch up!

[01:21]

CK: And I want to start out these podcasts with a little catch up with us, I guess.

Pam: Okay.

CK: So this morning we went on our usual run.

Pam: Our Sunday run.

CK: Our Sunday run. And this is something that we started at the beginning of this year- or at the end of last year. And Pam has just started running basically.

Pam: Literally. I had never run a mile in my life until the end of December, 2019.

CK: Yeah, it was on Christmas, right? Or yeah, Christmas day.

And so, yeah, Pam ran a mile for the first time on Christmas day, all the way through. Took about 11 and a half or so minutes, maybe a little more, I believe.

Pam: Yeah… About that.

CK: And today we’re up to two miles, and we did it under 20 minutes. Close to like 19:30? Somewhere around there?

Pam: Yeah… About that.

CK: So yeah, making huge progress. And that’s been fun for me seeing your progress, and I’m sure it’s been fun for you experiencing it.

Pam: Um, it is fun to make progress. The actual running part isn’t always fun, but it’s much better because I have you doing it with me.

CK: Yeah, it’s been fun for me watching you progress. So it’s cool.

But that’s something that I’ve been wanting to mention the past couple of weeks, and I forgot to mention the other week when I was saying how you were such a great cohost and it takes a lot of critical thinking to be able to come up with the questions you do and the review of what I say that you do to make what I say make more sense.

But on top of that, you’re doing all this after running and exerting yourself physically. So that’s another thing that you’re throwing in there and making things more difficult.

Pam: Man, I’m just kicking ass all over the place.

CK: I guess so!

So anyway, that’s where we’re at today and it’s a beautiful day here in Southern California.

The latest on my podcasting practice.

[03:34]

CK: And I am- I also want to kind of go over some of the things that I do to prepare for these episodes. So let’s get right into it and talk about the latest on my podcasting practice. This is where I talk about the process of practicing podcasting.

And so I generally- so I- way back in the first episode, I kind of started going down a little rabbit hole of why I’m doing this on Sundays and why I chose that day and why I think it would be good… because back then I was playing soccer every Sunday and I was preparing myself physically and mentally. And Sundays were all pretty much dedicated to soccer – getting ready for my game, and playing the game, and then hanging out with teammates after the game.

And so as a 40-year-old playing with younger players – and prior to this year where my original clubs taking a bit of a hiatus, I was playing with 20 year olds basically… So I had to be on top of my game and I did a lot to prepare for that. And so that included mental preparation, meal preparation, supplements, nutrition, and all that stuff.

And so Sundays I was pretty much peaked out in terms of what I could do with my body and my mind. And so I started noticing after getting into a really good routine that after my games, when I was hanging out with teammates, that I was in a super-good mindspace and was starting to have great conversations…

And so then we came up with this idea, or I came up with the idea of this Practice podcast and it happened to be on a Sunday, and that day that we did it, I don’t think I had a game. I didn’t have a game that day. And I- it made sense to me to continue on that day because of all the things I do in preparation for soccer and how I felt after my games and the space that my mind was in.

So I thought, you know, it’d be good on Sundays to do these podcast episodes and get these- get my voice on tape or recorded when my mind is in such a good place.

ut since then, I haven’t had a soccer game on Sunday because of the pandemic. So I’ve kind of kept some of those habits or routines that I held over from my soccer Sundays. And I’ve kind of let some of them go.

And on that same note, I think we’re just going to kind of meld together to the segments here with the podcasting practice and freetalking. I’m just going to kind of riff and go on a lot of tangent salads.

Or maybe I’ll noodle around – a term that we heard… was that yesterday on Hot Ones? What’s his name? Jeff Goldbloom, who’s into jazz and plays jazz music was asked about the term “noodling.”

Sean Evans was asking Jeff about noodling and what it means. And from what Jeff said, it’s basically like riffing, or riffing on whatever’s going on at the moment, or just kind of letting things go and seeing where things take you. And, you know, where maybe kind of your intuition takes you and do things intuitively.

Pam: So, if you’re going to noodle, then we need to go back to my suggestion of tangent spaghetti.

CK: That’s where I was going.

Pam: Alright. Good.

CK: So maybe- maybe tangent spaghetti’s are more kind of laid-back, free-form. Not necessarily diving too deep, but touching on several tangents. Whereas tangent salads go deeper into the tan- tangents and those other rabbit holes. But anyway, yeah, we’re just kind of going in a tangent on tangents.

My self-reflection from Practicing continues to expand.

[07:53]

CK: So…  So where were we? I’m noodling. Oh yeah… So riffing on…

Pam: You were talking about your Sunday practices and how you’ve kept some of them and stopped some of them.

CK: Oh, yeah. So I guess I’ll mention that I have a mug of coffee right now. And I kind of wanted to mention that because a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was drinking coffee during a practice session. And one of our friends, uh, one of our biggest fans, Darryl, who I’ve mentioned before.

Pam: Hi Darryl!

CK: He said that there was something negative about drinking coffee, if you want to speak. And I actually haven’t looked into it. I kind of assumed it had to do with maybe the heat constricting your vocal chords or your blood vessels or something like that.

Pam: Probably heat and caffeine. Both are constrictive.

CK: Yeah, I was- And then I was trying to think if it was a chemical- of a chemical nature, but then I was wondering like… ‘Cause heat usually dilates your blood vessels,

Pam: Yeah, I was gonna say heats not constricting. Yeah.

CK: Yeah. But then I wonder if maybe extreme heat and, like, maybe the shock of a more extreme stimulus might produce some kind of acute sympathetic reaction that constricts your blood vessels. So I’m not sure. Uh, just so just kind of noodling on that.

But so I stopped drinking coffee, or I think I drank one more week after then, then I kind of stopped with that idea in mind because I just wanted to see if it would make a difference.

But I don’t know that it does, and I don’t necessarily hear it, but I kind of want to notate when I’m drinking coffee and when I’m not. So I’ll kind of notate that in the show notes as well.

And I also took a Qualia Mind supplement this morning, and that’s something that I’ve been taking once a week on Sundays. And that started with soccer.

But it’s a supplement from the Neurohacker Collective. And when it first came out in its original formula, it was just packed with a whole bunch of nutrients and botanicals, and it’s been referred to as the God pill. And the formulations’ been very rigorous- rigorously researched.

And there’s a new formula out right now and there’s several different kinds of the supplement. So there’s like a focus… Qualia Focus supplement. And the one I use is Qualia Mind.

And so that’s the only nootropic that I’ve used that I’ve actually felt significant effects from. And in general, when I take supplements, I don’t really feel anything from them. I don’t notice anything from them. So I try not to take supplements, and I try to take as less as possible and just kind of have certain supplements on hand where I’ve researched the science and trust the science enough to determine that it’s worth it to use these supplements if I need to.

And so Qualia, I’ve- since it- I actually can feel the results from that I’ve been using that once a week and started doing that for my soccer games to be mentally strong, which in turn helps with being physically strong.

And now with the podcast and trying to put my mind around speaking and what I’m going say, and just talking on the fly and having to be alert and function cognitively, I’ve been- because of that, I’ve been continuing to take the Quality Mind on Sundays to see if that affects me. And I believe it does.

I think there was one week where I didn’t take it that I kind of noticed I wasn’t as alert. Although it could have also been confounded with some lack of sleep and stuff like that. So I kind of want to start notating, like little things like that in my show notes, just to kind of observe and I just like doing this kind of self-quantification stuff and experimenting on myself.

And the other thing about that – and this might be a tangent – is that since I’ve started this practice of. self-reflection with this podcast – and of course I’ve been talking about self reflection and journaling and how I couldn’t really get into journal writing, but I’m doing it more in this form of the audio and podcasting – since I’ve been doing that, I’ve stopped doing my self quantification logs.

So I used to record probably over a hundred, maybe even 200 different data points every day on all the different things that I did in terms of my routines every morning and what I ate – If I ate something that I know that I didn’t know where I came from – and all the supplements that I take and all the routines that I do…

And I did- I was recording this everyday for like the past two years. And it was kind of maybe verging towards the obsessive end of the spectrum…

Pam: Maybe? Baby, you wear three body trackers.

CK: Yeah, that’s true. So, since I started this podcast, I’ve let go of one of the body trackers and now I’m only wearing two. And I stopped doing the self quantification checklist every day.

And I think I- it was kind of a practice that helped me- I mean, it was a self-reflection- self-reflective practice with the self-quantification. But doing this podcast has kind of replaced that self-reflection and upgraded it, because before it was more- it was a little less mindful when I’m going through and checking off different things.

And now with this recorded speech, it’s a little more mindful because I have to think about what I’m saying and I have to- when I go back and listen, I’m reflecting on what I said. And it’s of course, a lot better process in terms of self reflection. And it’s let me like go of that obsessive practice.

So…

Pam: That’s huge. Cause you’ve been doing that for years.

CK: I know… and like, I haven’t done anything with that data.

Pam: Right.

CK: So it’s because of that, it’s been kind of useless in that respect. But, you know, I don’t want to say it’s been completely useless because it helped me reflect and to help curb some anxiety around that kind of stuff.

But at the same time, now I can see that it was- you know, it may have been helping curb my anxiety and that’s why I was doing it. And because it’s become a habit, I’ve started becoming more mindless about it. And I was just doing it just because I was doing it. And just because I had been doing it.

And so now with this practice of podcasting, I’ve become more mindful about that specific practice and now I don’t need it. And it would be interesting to get that data analyzed, which I would love to do. But there’s so much data that I would need to hire like a statistician or something like that.

And I don’t know what would be teased out of it that I haven’t observed kind of intuitively or just more- a little more subjectively. So yeah, I’m not sure how, you know, if it would be worth it or not to get it analyzed, but I have it. And so it’s there, but I don’t need any more. So that’s something that’s come out of this practice that I’ve realized.

Pam: I think that’s a really, um, huge result, because we never talked about you tracking that stuff. Or if we did, it was very minimal. So there was never a conscious decision to say this practice of talking and podcasting and doing self-reflection is going to have this effect of relieving anxiety that I have around needing to track all kinds of stuff with my body or supplements or, you know, activities and everything.

But, simply through the process of developing this practice and becoming more mindful and having the- the vocalization and the discussion, you were able to recognize that there was this other practice in your life that was taking up time and mental energy and focus that you don’t need to have anymore.

So simply by becoming healthier, in one aspect, you are able to, um, benefit in another.

CK: Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s just like I’ve been saying before this practice of podcasting has just increased my mindfulness in general. And so because of that, it’s stuff like this that I start noticing a little more and become more mindful of it. And then I’m able to tease it out and kind of evaluate the efficacy of my routines and habits.

So yeah, I mean, I can’t keep saying enough about this practice and the self-reflection that it’s being- bringing about. So, yeah, it’s been cool. It’s been fun.

And continuing on the podcasting front, we’re starting to get comfortable in the space that I’ve rearranged and we’re getting our sessions up and going a lot more…

Pam: Easily. Yeah.

CK: Easily… more efficiently. And I think we got ready today and like five minutes, if that. So it’s taken us a lot less time to set up and get ready to record, which is great.

Today, we’re a little busy. It’s my- We’re celebrating my dad’s 70th birthday, which is actually tomorrow, I believe, on June 8th. So happy birthday, dad! That’s where we’re going to head after this. I don’t think he listens to my podcast or any podcasts for that matter, but it’s the thought that counts.

And so, yeah, it’s been awesome getting this stuff together and rearranged in configured so that we can do this quickly and not have like, well, me getting frustrated about setting everything up and putting everything together.

Like before, it was taking like half an hour to an hour to get set up. And now we’re doing this every week, so it’s nice to get that process done more efficiently. And we have a couple more things coming in this week and hopefully I can kind of finish out all this rearrangement around the studio and stuff this week and get back toward to my normal flow.

I feel kind of in limbo right now, because I’ve been out of my normal flow for a little bit. But starting to get back in… Oh, I got a new desktop computer, and haven’t realized how much of a rate limiting factor that’s been.

So like about a year ago, I got a new laptop and was super excited about that. It’s a really good machine – Dell XPS 15. And back then we had some ideas, you know, of course with starting our podcast Equanimity and other podcasts ideas or other creative endeavors. But I didn’t really know much about the audio processing/production process.

And so when I bought my laptop, I was buying it for work and digital media and mostly web development and online marketing kind of stuff, and it was more than sufficient for that. But then my desktop PC went down shortly after I got my new laptop. And I thought I’d be able to run everything off the new laptop. Like, it was powerful enough for what I needed to do.

But now that I’m into the music production and this audio processing, these programs take up a lot of power, and a lot of memory and bandwidth, and my laptop just was not cutting it. And even with my regular work, it was. Kind of slowing me down. I had to wait for stuff.

It obviously was not as powerful as a desktop computer. So I finally ended up getting a new – or new to me – desktop this week. And found awesome deal on a used desktop. And that’s a whole story within itself, but we won’t get into that here.

But yeah, now that I have it, everything’s running so fast, so smoothly, and I didn’t realize how much of a limiting factor that was.

So a lot of what I like to do in terms of optimizing and making things more efficient is find, like, those rate limiting factors or bottlenecks, because if you can find those and solve those, then your productivity can increase exponentially. Or, I mean, at least linearly it- whatever- in whatever case it’s increasing, but you have to find where those bottlenecks are or where those limiting factors are.

And so the desktop PC was one for me. And so now that we’ve got that going, I’m starting to have it- get everything loaded up and we’re doing our second podcast recording on it today. We did one yesterday for Pam’s new upcoming podcast: Not Bad Advice.

And so things are going great with the studio and we’re getting up and running and everything’- we’re starting to get good at this in terms of recording. So hopefully we’ll just continue getting better at recording and the content. And so that’s where we’re at.

So, Pam, do you have anything you want to mention or anything else new going on? We got a new little mobile cart for Pam, like a little mobile workstation. You want to talk about that?

Pam: Um, yeah, it’s just, uh, a desk that you can use either standing or sitting. So it’s, um, You can just lift it up to stand or release it to sit. So, and it’s on wheels so I can cruise around the house and work anywhere that I want.

And it’s perfect for our podcasting setup because I’ve just got the mic, um, clamped on to the desk and we don’t have to like move my entire setup into the bedroom when we record, it’s totally mobile and I can just cruise around the house and, uh, makes the setup really easy.

And it makes my workstation much more comfortable because I normally am working at the kitchen counter or the dining room table, or kind of cruising all around. So, um, yeah, it’s been really nice.

CK: Yeah. Penn has been kind of a nomad in our house in terms of where she works. So, with this mobile cart thingy, she has all her stuff on the cart and she can just move the cart around and the cart’s already set up for her and it’s got a boom arm with the microphone on it. And so it’s really easy to position.

Whereas before we had like a little stand or even the little original Yeti stand that came with it, that we couldn’t really position it where we wanted it. So, yeah, it’s, it’s really nice, really convenient. Maybe we’ll post a picture somewhere eventually. And I’ll post more details about the setup in some of the- maybe the agile podcasting show notes or something like that.

So, yeah, that’s where we’re at for now. And there’s a lot that I want to talk about with all the things going on around the world right now, but I’m not sure if now is the right time. I kind of get- I honestly haven’t been too up to date on everything that’s going on and what I’m finding out here is really disturbing.

So I, I kind of want to get my wrap my head around it a little more, and maybe next week I can express my opinion about different things and how it relates to the way that I think and, like, complex systems and kind of tie everything back into that. Because I have a lot of thoughts, and I don’t know if I’m the person that you should be listening to, but I think I can offer a different perspective or a perspective that you may not have thought of before, or even have thought to think about.

Outro.

[26:01]

CK: So yeah, I think we’ll leave it at there for now. And yeah, today or yeah, this week we just kind of float through and we’ll keep it there. So because we have to go and help celebrate dad’s birthday at a distance. So that should be fun. And I think we’ll keep it there for this week. Do you have anything else that you want to add?

[26:29] Pam: Nope. I’m all good.

[26:30] CK: Okay. So. We’ll leave it there in, before we sign off Pam, where can people find you?

[26:39] Pam: You can find me on Twitter at Pamela underscore Lund.

[26:43] CK: and you can find me on Twitter at CK disco. So that’s all for this week and I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing to Lou