Practice Session #48

Welcome to my show notes for this week’s session of Practice!

We record these sessions every Sunday. I try to publish the audio on the same day of recording, but I may get delayed now and then due to various reasons.

Also, I will usually have the AI-generated transcript and my initial notes published on the same day of recording as well. On Fridays, I’ll (try to) go back through and proof the transcript while I add all of my notes.

I’ll be utilizing this opportunity to clarify and elaborate on points that I may not have conveyed as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

So, on Friday, I’ll intersperse all my notes with the transcription from the audio below (unless I don’t 🤷).

Intro.

[00:00]

CK: There we go.

Heyo! I’m CK, and you’re listening to Practice. I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. What started out as a practice of podcasting, as well as speaking in general, has evolved into a practice of self-coaching and self-reflection while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m fortunate to be joined by my Practice partner and partner in life: Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me.

CK: Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every Sunday we reflect on the past week and my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtues of practice itself.

We’re doing this on the fly, and our dialogue here is unedited, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis and commentary on things I could have done better. You may find this and more information about this project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Catch up with the Anomaly and the Linchpin.

CK: We’re recording today on January 24th of 2021. And this is practice session number 48, everything okay. With everything.

Pam: Yeah. So you just got really loud for some reason in the middle.

CK: Yeah. Interesting.

Pam: yeah, I don’t know.

CK: Okay. Well, we are trying a couple of different things today and we are looking at each other through zoom. Now we’ve been using Google meet. And before that we were using whereby I believe

Pam: yes. Yeah. Yeah.

CK: And before that we were using squad cast, I believe so we’re unsealed and the video quality seems to be better. Seems to be the best out of what we’ve used so far. So let’s see how that goes. And how about we take a quick temperature of your week in terms of mood and mindset, progress, momentum.

Pam: Um, okay. I wasn’t really ready for that. Um, my week was good. It, um, You know, I go through these flows where I’m like, really, like, I have tons of ideas and really want to move fast on stuff. And then I kind of cycle back into a slower mode where I’m more into planning and not quite so much into action. Um, so this was more of a planning and not forward progressing week, which is fine.

Um, you can’t be moving forward all the time. So other than that, I had a good week. It was, um, Uh, yeah, it was a little cold, which always makes me a little bit grumpy, but other than that, it was good. How about you?

CK: I had a pretty trying week, I guess you could say in terms of my schedule and routines and primarily my sleep cycle. So my sleep wake cycle has been off for the past, but past two weeks, and I’m really starting to feel it right now. Out of all the time that I could have felt it. So yesterday I only got like four, four and a half hours of sleep.

And today I only got about five, so running really low on sleep. But yesterday I was trying to, well, I mean the whole week or so that I’ve been experiencing this, I’ve been just kind of going with the flow and I’ve been a little less worried about sticking to my sleep cycle because it’s been so good lately.

Or over like the past two or so years since I got it fixed. And especially the last few months, I feel like it’s been really good. So I’ve just kind of been, not focusing or obsessing about it as much and just kind of letting things go and listening to my body. But this past week and a half or two, I just haven’t been able to get back on my.

Typical cycles that I’ve been on and it’s been fine until like yesterday, I would say. And so yesterday I only got about four, four and a half hours of sleep and I didn’t want to get up, uh, you know, I just want to stay in bed, but it was already like nine o’clock or so, and I just didn’t want to be in bed all morning.

So I ended up thinking that. If I’m tired and need more sleep, I’ll take a nap in the afternoon. And I was pretty sure that I would need to after only four, four and a half hours of sleep, but I ended up just doing stuff and working on stuff and not needing the nets. So I thought I would power through that and I be sleepy.

Then it. Earlier than I was getting sleepy throughout the past week or two, but that didn’t happen either. So I ended up staying up till like midnight or so, and then only getting about five hours of sleep last night. So I’m not sure what’s going on. I may have some sleep banked up, so, because I’ve been sleeping so well previously, but.

Right now, I feel like I really want to get back on my cycle and it’s been throwing everything else off too. So my routines are pushed back and I’m miss. I feel like I’m missing out on time during the day. So when they try to focus on that this coming week.

Pam: And you mentioned that, um, I had a few mornings this week where you were still in bed because you had had a rough night asleep and it was like, you know, 10 30 in the morning when you were still laying in bed and. It was bringing back those memories of the years when you had insomnia and you would be in bed until one o’clock in the afternoon.

And I would be trying to live my life and trying to work and, um, trying to work around your insomnia. So that was a little bit of like, Minor PTSD, bringing up all those old feelings. And it’s really easy for me to go into like, feeling like you were purposely staying up or that you were being irresponsible or, you know, all those judgments that I had before we knew that it was actually like a, a medical issue that, that needed fixing.

Um, it’s so I have to remind myself that that’s, that it’s not on purpose, you know?

CK: Yeah, definitely not. And I had some inklings of that PTSD per se come up as well as, um, being mindful of the cycle. And the, the tough part about all this is that even though I’ve fixed my sleep pretty much, for the most part, when I wake up in the morning, I never feel like I I’m like energized and fresh and ready to wake up.

Like still, even though. About two or three years ago. I fixed my sleep. Even after that, I just feel like I could sleep more in the morning when I wake up. And so it’s tough to distinguish whether or not I’ve had, you know, sleep. I don’t know if that makes sense, just because I feel the same, no matter what, when I get up and then as I’m progressing throughout the day, I feel like I can get myself to a point where I’m awake and I can get stuff done and be productive.

And then if I get momentum behind that, then it’ll like, I won’t even. Realize or notice what my sleep quality was like the day before. So I don’t know if this is something that I developed out of habit and in the insomnia I had previously, you know, in terms of just having to get through the day, all the time without sleep.

And so, yeah, I dunno if it’s that. Feeling is something that I, that I developed that, you know, I can just get myself up and going regardless. So, yeah, it’s, it’s tough to discern for me if I got enough sleep or not, but now I’m right now, I’m feeling that I’m not getting enough. So I do want to start focusing more on my, uh, sleep, sleep wake cycle.

So, yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve been dealing with and I’m just really tired right now. And as we were starting to, I was like, I lost all my routines and. All my processes and we didn’t even start recording. And I just started the podcast. Basically. I just started talking like we were recording. So yeah, we’ll see if we can get through today’s session.

And I do want to try to keep it close to half an hour. We’ve been going a bit over the past couple of weeks and I’m tired today. So let’s try to keep it. For time. So let’s get into our new segment that we just started last week and I’ve come up with a name for it. And this is our segment where we each name and object for the other person.

So I’ll pick an object for Pam and within 10 seconds, Pam all have to come up with however many different ways she can think of using this object for. So last week Pam gave me, um, come on brain. Do you remember duck tick? No, I gave you duct

Pam: jar,

CK: Oh yeah. So last, last week Pam gave me Mason jar and I said something like cup and instrument in STEM.

Yeah. That didn’t make sense. And, uh, Trying to get in soft tissue, Sandra and I gave Pam duct tape and she said something like doorstop bracelet, door buffer or something.

Pam: Like the thing, nothing behind the door to stop it from hurting the wall.

CK: Yeah. So this comes from the alternative uses test and it’s an exercise for creativity. So this’ll be interesting. Because I’m so tired and my brain’s not functioning very well right now. So it should be pretty interesting. So I’m going to call this segment. Well, the thing is, when we’re doing this exercise, we’re taking objects and kind of breaking them down to its fundamental parts.

In order to use them differently than what they’re typically used for, or have more creative uses. I mean, we could say typical uses as well, but that only gets us so far. And so when we break down or when you break down. Stuff like this into it’s foundations or fundamentals, you’re practicing something called first principles.

And this comes from physics and Elon Musk is a huge proponent of first principles. And I I’m sure I talked about first principles a lot, but I don’t know if we’ve actually gone into it, but it’s basically breaking down something to its most fundamental foundational parts. And taking those parts and being mindful of the foundation and using that to build up something different or better or more efficient and kind of maybe disrupt a product line or market, or for instance, like with musters Tesla, obviously, and Elon Musk is developing more.

Affordable ways to make batteries and taking first principles of energy and batteries and using that to build his batteries, or I think a better example. Uh, so, um, Oh, come on brain. Okay. So I think a better example might be space sex with the rockets. So, you know, my Musk is reusing the rockets in order to save costs instead of spending however, millions of dollars to build a rocket every time it launches.

So instead of building it every time he’s reusing the same rocket bye. Winding the rocket so that it can be reused. So, yeah. So that’s kind of an idea of first principles. I hope I articulated that well enough. Um, considering how my brain is right now, but did I even, uh,

Pam: You haven’t said the name yet.

CK: okay, so we’re naming. The segment, forced principles. How do you like that?

Pam: I like it.

CK: Okay.

Pam: where I thought you were going. I thought it was going to be something with like object Tivity

CK: Yeah. Oh, interesting. I bet it could have been a fun brainstorming session. Okay. So let’s see. Do you want to start this time? I think I went first, last time. So. So we’ll give Pam 10 seconds and I’m going to name an object and she’s going to try to name as many uses for that object as she can in 10 seconds.

Pam: Get the timer ready.

CK: Yup.

No, I’ll have to think of an interesting I’m doing okay. I got it. Are you ready? Okay, 10 seconds. And your object is, Oh, shoot. Oh, no. Okay. In your object is a baseball cap.

Pam: Can you say a baseball cap for a cereal bowl, a plant pot, a really bad Frisbee.

CK: so he got, you had a baseball camp and you use it as a cereal bowl. A pot in the Frisbee. It’s not bad. I like it. It works. I think actually I’m using it as a pot. I don’t know. We kind of like that. That’d be interesting to see.

Pam: Yeah, we might have to try that.

CK: All right. So right. Turn

Pam: All right. You ready?

CK: has ever.

Pam: Your object is your tennis ball.

CK: Tennis ball as a weapon, as a throwing object is a foot roller fool massager as a dunk toy. Yeah.

Pam: pretty good.

CK: Yeah, not bad. I think so. Interestingly enough, and made me think about focused versus diffused thinking. And I think because my mind is just kind of scattered and humming at a low level right now that I’m more in a diffused mode. And so, um, my mind’s kinda more open to more creative or different ideas.

Pam: Chaos invites chaos.

CK: Yeah. So I don’t know. It’s just some speculative. Assessing in the moment. Okay. So we got forced principles, first principles, all the way. Let’s move on to our progress with podcasting. And I’ll go ahead and say that I. Did not make very good progress over the past week, especially considering that I was eager to publish practice on the same day.

And we were excited about the new preempt that we’re using for Pam and her SM seven being. And what, so something happened with the new preempt, the PreSonus two pre V2 that we were using to boost the gain to pans SM seven B, to see if I could lower the noise floor even more and not have to do as much.

Post-processing. And it seemed to work fairly well. I don’t know if it was worth. The trade-off, you know, I haven’t really listened to it too analytical yet, or too critically yet because of the other issue that happened, it seemed like something lost power during the recording. Like some, like there was power loss to one of the preamps or something in the game.

Just cut like a third of the way through the episode. So we couldn’t figure out what it was. And I was just about to ask Pam if it’s still on, but we’re actually not using it today. Cause before we started recording, I started testing stuff out and I let the preempt the new preempt run for an hour while I was playing music in the studio.

And it seemed to be fine. So. I have no idea what happened, so it could have been the other, so it could have been Pam’s audio in your face, which is , which I didn’t use. I use my own audio interface, but it didn’t seem like it was the PreSonus preamp. So I don’t know why it would have been the zoom H five or I don’t know.

There’s that’s the thing when it comes to. There’s audio gear in the signal flow is that there’s so many different variables and there’s so many different options to choose from. So we’re running Pam through what we been running her through with the SM seven B and the fed head and the zoom H five. So we’re back to that today.

And then I’m going to keep looking into the PreSonus preamp and other possible solutions. But, yeah, that was weird last week. It doesn’t make sense to me why the game would just cut after a third of the way through. But otherwise the audio felt fine. I just had to normalize it and match the volume. But yeah, I ended up having to do more than usual because we add some new things in and had to troubleshoot in some issues occurred, but yeah, I mean, still having fun with it.

Um, In terms of not bad advice, ran into some issues there as well. Cause we’re still publishing those earlier episodes where we had the earlier audio quality. And so it’s, it’s interesting going through that because every week it seems like it’s up and down, up and down and it’s always different and there’s always something else to consider and figure out.

So, yeah, it’s been trying, but we’ve been progressing. So that’s where we’re at with that. Any updates on your end, Pam?

Pam: No, I was just going to add to that, that, um, on top of that, you know, are using descript for transcription and text editing

CK: Oh yeah.

Pam: like that. And I know there was an issue. Um, with exporting less too, not bad advice episodes ago where like put in a seven second pause or something like

CK: Oh, yeah,

Pam: some of the music wasn’t lined up correctly, and then I’ve been having issues with it as well.

I’m not transcribing videos. So we’re running into tech issues with descript, kind of all over the place, which is a little frustrating.

CK: I’m a little disappointed with descript lately because of all these bugs that we’ve been experiencing and their support is not very good. I’m still waiting for a support answer from a request that I put in like three months ago, I think. And so they started a discord channel. And so I got in there and it seems like they’re a little more responsive to support there as well, but not a hundred percent responsive to everyone’s questions.

And it’s not that busy in there either. So, I don’t know what’s going on there. If they have dedicated support reps that are what it doesn’t seem like it. And so I would warn users of descript about that, about the bugginess. Um, at this point, the features are of descript are still so awesome to me that it’s worth the usage, but I would not count on descript.

In terms of getting something published at a certain time or having some kind of time-sensitive project. So yeah. You want to make sure that you’re working ahead was descript in case of running into issues and bugs and stuff like that. So, yeah, that’s the deal with that. And. Yeah, I guess we can move on.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to add? Okay, let’s move on to the weekly ForceCast and the first segment of the weekly ForceCast is Podspo where we recommend a podcast that stood out to us over the past week or so, and I am totally not ready for this. I haven’t. Come up. I didn’t jot one down.

And now that we’re doing it, I can’t think of one. Can, did you have any this week, man?

Pam: um, you know, mostly I caught up on reply all and, um, There’s a few others. Radiolab did three episodes. I think that all related to the Capitol attacks and, um, they were really well done and really, um, thought provoking, not just, you know, re repeating or parroting news that was available anywhere else. I thought they did a really nice job of presenting it in a thoughtful way.

CK: Hmm, cool. Yeah. And those are two of my favorite podcasts reply, all and radio land. And I may go into them in the future. ForceCast but yeah, those are definitely two. Of like my top five podcasts. And now that you mentioned that, I think I tried to stay away from all that political in news stuff over the past week.

You know, it was a little more since I. Been short on sleep and not functioning at a hundred percent. I’ve been a little more relaxed and listening to like true crime and stuff like that. So that’s probably why I didn’t have a podcast stand out last week.

Pam: Yeah. Manage your mental health when you’re not sleeping well. And taking in too much of a current events can definitely have an impact on that.

CK: Yeah, definitely. And of course I’ve been listening to podcasts that I’ve already recommended, and those are the daily stoic and shortwave in Ted talks, daily listening, listen to those all week as well. So. Well, and Podspo there. And next up is Linchpinspo where Pam gives us some inspiration from planets.

So are the stars or the cards?

Pam: So this week, we have a full moon coming at you on Thursday. The 28th

CK: Oh

Pam: and full moons are actually the middle of the lunar cycle. So they’re, they’re the ones that get everybody’s focused because they’re the big, bright ones in sky. And so we, we, we focus on that a lot, but it’s actually the middle of the lunar cycle, which starts with the new moon.

About two weeks prior to that, the new moon is when we have the least amount of light reflected, like the moon is, is dark. And then the light grows over the two weeks after that, until we hit the full moon. And then we have the most light reflected with the full moon. And then it decreases again until we reach another new moon in a couple of weeks.

So that’s like the monthly cycle of the moon. So since full moons are in the middle of that cycle, when the most light is being reflected, this is a time for review and reflection. So it’s a great time to let things go to make amends or to do whatever you need to do to release things that are holding you back.

So that you can improve in the next cycle. So you can kind of like use the next two weeks to let stuff go so that when we hit that new moon again, you can start fresh.

CK: Interesting.

Pam: And this full moon is in Leo, which is a sign that wants to be seen. It wants to express itself and be appreciated for what it does. So if you need some direction for what to focus on for this full moon, you could focus on where you feel like you’re not being seen for who you are or who you want to be.

And how your beliefs about yourself and what you deserve are blocking people from seeing you that way. So what beliefs are you ready to change? So you can get ready for that next new moon. And even if you don’t believe that the lunar cycle can have any impact on your life. You can still use it in a totally rational way.

We go through cycles everyday. Anyway, like sleep cycles like CK was talking about. And the more you fight that the worst off you are. So working with natural cycles and having a regular one that you use to plan review and adjust can help you grow with less effort. So, if you use that lunar cycle, you don’t need to come up with your own schedule.

Like it’s already there and you can see it as a reminder when the moon is dark, use it as a reminder to plant what you want to grow as the lightning increases. And when the moon is bright, use that time to reflect, review and release as the light decreases.

CK: Awesome. I like that. That’s cool. Thank you.

Pam: You’re welcome.

CK: So I just realized that I didn’t say a quote for the week.

Pam: I thought maybe you had decided to skip that

CK: Yeah, I almost did because I didn’t have one before we started. So I was kind of struggling around for one and I remembered one from smart and check the guard. Who’s a Danish philosopher from the 18 hundreds and he was. Very big into Socratic philosophy. And I’m in the last week of a college course on sworn trigger guards philosophy.

So this is why he’s top of my mind right now. And I didn’t know much of anything about Chika guard before starting this course about seven weeks ago. And I. Was immediately attracted to his philosophy because of his fascination with Socrates, but like it’s re it was really interesting learning about Kierkegaard because he’s like, if he was.

Around now in present day and philosophizing, what he was the way he did it, I would probably think he was some crazy person and not really pay attention, but no, after the passage of all this time and studying of his texts, like the stuff, like a lot of it still seems crazy to me. And I’m. Still wrapping my head around some of it, but a lot of it is very descriptive of a lot of accounts, concepts that I’ve come up with and a lot of concepts that I’ve synergized and synthesized.

So yeah, I’m just really into kick a guy right now. I don’t, I don’t know if I agree with everything he says, but. Going through this course was interesting because they went through Keuka guard’s process of his philosophy and his ratings and his progression in development. So I found all that really interesting, but here’s the quote, and this is my sparring trick, your garden.

And you go, it goes, life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. And so I really liked that because of the aspect of time. And of course it incorporates reflection and proactiveness or proaction and did goes into philosophy in general. I mean, philosophy is basically a process of self-reflection. In how we behave in the world in our moral values and stuff like that. And so, yeah, I don’t even know what I’m saying now. I’m just looking at the timer in word over 31 minutes. No. So thinking about ending this, but yeah.

Pam: let me just say it like that quote totally goes along with what I was saying about the. The reflection and the cycle of the

CK: Yeah, exactly. That’s why it reminded me

Pam: And yeah, you were talking about his, that his ideas kind of matching a lot of your philosophies and Jupiter is the planet of philosophy. And like, you know, we talk about it being your planet.

And Kierkegaard has Jupiter in Leo, which is where this new, whether this full moon is happening and he’s a Leo ascendant. So, um, I think it’s very synergistic that you brought him up.

CK: Awesome. That’s a perfect place to end it. All right. Well, thanks for that town. And of course, thanks for joining me this week as always, where can people find you?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter, where I am at Pamela underscored land.

CK: And you might be able to find me on Twitter at CK disco. And I have a lot of things in the works. We’ll see how they come about this coming week and hopefully I can get my cycles lined up. So, yeah, thanks for joining me is always, and I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing to loom