Practice Session #8

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.

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

Intro.

[00:00]

CK: Okay, here we go. All right.

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 also the whole purpose behind it. I’m using this platform to practice podcasting and practice speaking in general, while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice. So every week I’ll be talking about my experience with this process along with various lifestyle practices, and theories and ideas behind the virtue of practice itself.

Make sure to check out the detailed show notes for this episode where I’ll follow up on all the things I could’ve done better. You can find that and more info about this whole project at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

And as always, I am fortunate to be here with my practice partner and partner in life: Pam.

Pam: Partner in crime, or is that a different podcast?

CK: Uhh… we could make this crime podcast. Listen to enough true crime.

😲 Look at Pam, trying to throw me off right at the outset!

The latest on my podcasting practice.

[01:14]

CK: So today is April 19th, 2020, and Sunday afternoon, about the noon hour over here in SoCal. I was going to say sunny, but it’s a little cloudy today. We saw a little bit of sun earlier.

Pam: We did.

CK: And we’re changing things up a little bit today for this session.

Pam: What’s new?

CK: Well, first of all, we’re experimenting with some home recording, and we have Pam in a different room of the house now. And so before, she was in the main area of the home, which is open to the kitchen, dining room, and the great room. And so would you say you had like a bit of an echoey sound quality?

Pam: It just, yeah, it sounded a little bit echoey, and there were sounds from our appliances…

CK: Oh, right.

Pam: That were bothering me, so I just thought we’d experiment a little bit and see if we can get some better sound.

CK: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so we’re getting right into the first segment, which is going to be about this podcasting practice. And so things are rolling along. We’re being super productive with this podcast and I’m really excited about what I’ve gotten done this past week.

And so first of all, I want to go over the episode format because I think I have it solidified now. And so we’re basically going to have three segments.

The first one is this one where I talk about the podcasting practice, and then the second segment is one I introduced last week, which is the freetalking segment.

And then the third segment, which I keep forgetting about, and I don’t think I’ve done yet… This is the eighth episode…

So the third segment, which is basically the basis of this podcast, is going to be on practices and practicing. So I’ll talk about maybe ideas or new theories or leave off the listeners with a tip or challenge having to do with the virtue of practice.

Pam: Okay.

CK: So, rolling along with the podcasting segment…

Now that we have that format out of the way, I think I’ll be a little more comfortable moving forward and knowing that these episodes have a bit more structure. So it’s nice to have that in place and kind of have things going on a routine now. So as we know, routines are great in terms of automating certain habits (I should’ve said “practices” here).

And so goals I had from last week in terms of this podcasting practice included releasing this episode- or releasing last week’s episode by Monday, which I did.

Pam: Yay! Congratulations.

CK: Yeah, thank you. And so that’s exciting. I was able to get the workflow down, and released the episode by the next day. And I don’t see any problem with that, doing that moving forward. So I’m going to keep that goal for this week as well and see if I can get this episode released by tomorrow.

And the second goal I had last week was to get the minimum viable product up and ready for the website, and that is done.

Pam: Yay. Knocking things out.

CK: Yeah, totally. And that has been so fun for me.

WordPress website building fun.

[01:14]

CK: I know I talked last week about being able to get back into website building and doing something that I’m good at, or I know and I’m familiar with, after struggling or trying to learn this podcasting stuff for the past couple of weeks. So, yeah, so it’s been super fun working on the website.

And I was struggling for it a little bit at the beginning of the week in terms of my ideas not really coming into fruition. I ran into some obstacles, and so, I mean, I’ve never built a podcast website before, so there were some things I had to learn in that respect. And…

Pam: Like how to embed episodes or…

CK: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of different content or content types. So I use the content management system called WordPress, which is probably the most popular CMS out there, and it’s an open source platform. And I just love it. I- it’s- I mean, it’s no wonder why it’s so popular.

And there’s a lot of different things they call plugins that you can “plug in” to the WordPress and have it run a lot of different features. And there’s like thousands of plugins out there that – and a lot of them do a lot of the same things.

And so there was a lot of research and testing done with different plugins that do different things for podcasts. And so there’s a lot of different things to consider. So there was still somewhat of a learning curve that I had to, uh, tackle.

Pam: Overcome?

CK: Yeah, exactly. And so, uh, at the same time, it’s still, I- you know, I’m familiar with these kind of obstacles, so I didn’t have any problem. I mean, I’m a pretty fast learner, I like to think. And so it took me a week to pretty much get everything set up.

And by the end of the week, the website has come- and it’s not exactly what I envisioned to begin with, but now it’s even better than what I envisioned. So this whole process of combining like this agile development process along with my existing, kind of, meticulous process and meeting in the middle has worked out really well over the past week.

So I haven’t really hashed out – done an, like, an ex-post review of it or anything like that. But I mean, there’s definitely things that I want to reflect on that I want to take away from this process because I’ve been saying before, like, this is so different from my usual process where I research and analyze and just keep iterating and experimenting. And with this current agile process, I’m just putting stuff out there and publishing it and iterating it after doing that.

So having those processes meet in the middle worked out really well for me this past week, and I would love it if listeners will check out the website at ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice. That landing page, I’m really happy with it.

And I feel like I’ve been doing a better job at trying to get across what I’m doing with this process and this practice of the podcast. So hopefully it helps clear things up and kind of crystallizes this idea. And it also may give listeners a better idea of how I operate and my current vocabulary and what I want to do in terms of trying to reintegrate and basically communicate better with general society.

Cause you know, I’ve talked about being pedantic before and I think you could probably see that in the content that I wrote on the landing page. But like I was talking about last week, we were talking about push versus pull identity. And now I’m getting more comfortable with just putting myself out there the way I am and getting feedback on that and seeing what comes out of that.

And you know, it’s all a learning experience. And like I said last week, that acronym for FAIL stands for first attempt in learning. And so I’m getting comfortable in failing, or learning basically, all of these times that I’m putting this new stuff out there and just kind of basically testing myself and experimenting. So…

Pam: On a practical note, um, will there be information in the show notes or in the guide that you’re putting together about agile podcasting for what you recommend for the website as far as plugins and tools?

CK: Yeah, absolutely. I have these notes already, and so on that note, that’s a goal that I want to implement for this coming week is to put up content. So right now I still have a little more work to do in terms of the show note pages.

Right now there is- there is a minimum viable product up. The show notes are up and they’re all transcribed and I have my notes and thoughts on them. There’s still a little more expansion I want to do to some of them, and I have a couple surprises that I’m thinking of implementing, and hopefully I’ll get those in this week.

😬 I ran into some trouble there, trying to figure out how in-depth I should go into the website building stuff.

Self-psychoanalyzing my social media anxiety.

[10:40]

CK: And… Yeah, and then the third goal from last week is also to begin sharing via social media. And so I think this one caused me the most problems.

Pam: Why?

CK: Well, like I was saying last week, I’m starting to reintegrate into social media.

I posted last weekend for the first time on Facebook all year, and then I, you know, I stated that I wanted to try to get on Facebook and check in like once a day. And I probably checked it maybe once every other day and responded to comments and stuff.

And then the- I think- so now, this is kind of like a self-psychoanalysis going on here, but now I’m kind of thinking that I had some built up anxiety around starting to share what I’m doing here with this practice. And so I’ve kind of been putting off sharing on social media until the last minute. So… but I did it!

I accomplished that goal and shared yesterday.

Pam: Oh, awesome!

CK: Yeah. So last night, like almost until the last possible minute. Well, it was- it was, uh, last night before dinner – and after dinner, you know, I don’t work, I just relax on the weekends – and so, pretty much the last possible minute for me. And the thing is, I haven’t checked since then.

Pam: That’s what I was just going to ask.

CK: Yeah, so I’m- I still have some anxiety over that. But the interesting thing is that not last night, but the night before, I had a terrible night of sleep.

So this is another interesting part of this session: is that I’m a little sleep deprived, which I haven’t been in awhile. I’ve been sleep deprived all week. And I’m in a bit of a sleep debt

And before- So I- I track all my sleeping parameters. Well, I don’t want to say “all” – it’s a little bit hyperbolic. But all the sleeping parameters I can track on my tracking devices. And I generally use three different health trackers. And so there’s a lot of data that I look at for self quantification, and so I’m very cognizant of my sleep quality because I’ve had issues with insomnia for a long time, up until a couple of years ago.

And my sleep hasn’t been very good over the past few years (Huh? It sounds like I said “hasn’t” but I meant has!) and this past week I had a little trouble sleeping. And there is a lot of different factors that could have went into that, but one of them was definitely anxiety around me sharing- finally sharing this project, and I didn’t sleep as well last week.

And I usually don’t get into sleep debt for more than a day or two, and I can usually correct that. But last week I was sleeping less than usual, and I had been in sleep debt all week. So there’s a couple of things I want to talk about that, but I think we might want to save that until we finish this segment.

And so, uh, one thing I want to clear up about these segments is that I’m going to try to leave the freetalking for the free talking segment ’cause I find that it’s pretty easy to go on tangent salads at any moment. And so I’m going to try to keep this podcasting segment to podcasting and try not to stray away too far and try to stay on subject and practice doing that.

And then leave the free talking for the free talking segment and practice the free talking during that segment. So just to clear that up.

But yeah, so by next week, I’d like to make sure I tighten up the show notes – the show note design for the website – and release the episode by tomorrow. And start sharing more via social media.

So that’s what we have to look forward to.

Pam: Okay.

🤦🏻‍♂️ I forgot to talk about the podcast directory submission process. Stay tuned for that in the next Practice Session!

Freetalking tangent salad based on sleep.

[15:15]

CK: All right. And so now we’re onto the freetalking segment.

And I guess we could just start talking about what I was talking about now.

And what was that? It was around sleep, right?

Pam: You were on sleep. I was about to ask if you slept better after posting on social about the project. Like was that a relief at all?

CK: Yeah. So that was actually- yeah, thank you. This is perfect.

So I was worried that I wouldn’t sleep very well last night because I’m- I was, you know, I’m anxious about how people responded to my posts.

Like basically I just shared ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice – the new landing page that I made – and that features links to various podcast directories like Apple and Stitcher and Spotify where people can go and look at, check out the podcast and listen to it.

And so, you know, I don’t know what the response is like yet. So there’s, you know, that uncertainty up in the air. And, you know, I would think that that would cause me enough anxiety that I wouldn’t have slept well last night. But I ended up getting a pretty good night of sleep and I did do some exercises to try to mitigate the anxiety, because, you know, I was foreseeing a night of restless sleep due to some built-up anxiety.

But yeah, I don’t know what the factor was that allow me to sleep well. Maybe, you know, it very well could have been the lack of sleep the night before. But yeah, I did have a good night of sleep last night, and now I feel… okay. I, you know, I’m still nervous about comments and the response and, you know, th- there could be no responses at all, which would be a weird

Pam: Yeah, I’m sure that’s not going to happen.

CK: Yeah.

Pam: Did you only share on Facebook or did you also share on Twitter?

CK: I only shared on Facebook so far. And on that note with Facebook, I also locked my Facebook down and made it private. So I was just kind of mitigating the number of people I was sharing it to, I guess.

Pam: That’s okay. I think that it’s fine to start in a safe environment.

CK: Right, exactly. That’s a great point. So tangent salad: Goal setting.

In terms of my goal to share via social media, I’d been, you know, kind of harboring the anxiety all week about sharing and what I finally ended up doing was sharing in the most minimal way possible. Which is just saying like, you know, “it took me until the age of 40 to feel comfortable in my own skin, and now I’m trying to find my voice.”

That’s pretty much what I posted, I think, with the link to Practice and that was it. Like, I was thinking of what to write and how to share it. And I was, you know, going to write this long diatribe of how I came across this process and, you know, how the idea started developing and why I’m doing it.

And you know, it’s all a rough draft. It’s a work in progress. And so, you know, I had feelings of anxiousness around putting out this unpolished product and, you know, how people are gonna react to it. But yeah, I just ended up throwing out a couple of sentences and just putting it up there.

So in terms of setting goals or progressing in your project, if you get stuck and you can’t.seem to keep things moving along. Just, you know, take the next smallest step that you can and whether you have to break something down or think about how, you know, what the next step is. It can hinder you and paralyze you to think about, like, the huge- the big goal at the end.

So, you know, if you think about all the small steps that you need to take to get there and then start with the next step that you need in order to get there, that’s, I mean, that’s the way to go.That’s what you need to do in order to get to the big picture goal in the first place.

So, you know, try not to think about the big thing that’s going to take a lot of work and you’re going to need to spend a lot of time, and it’s often a distance and it’s far away, you know, do the next thing that you can take a small step.

😬 Yeah, I still need a lot of work here. That was tough to listen back to and relive the mindset.

This is one of the areas I want to work on with my conversational skills, if not the most important one. I can write all day about the science and evidence around topics like goal-setting and productivity, but when it comes to talking about it, my mind opens up multiple worlds and I get knocked out of the present moment too easily.

🥱 Listening back now, I do think that the sleep debt I had built up over the past week did have an effect on my regression. I can see where I’m not making the connections I wanted to, and where I lose my train of thought. It all goes to show the importance of quality sleep!

Pam comes to the rescue with a great perspective.

[20:18]

Pam: I think there’s also a tendency to hide behind something being big, so you don’t do it. Like if you had put a lot of pressure on yourself to put together this big post and talk about the whole story, then you- you never do it. Whereas if you break it down to the most simple thing, then it’s easy to execute.

But at the same time, when you’re doing this big, huge thing, sometimes you’re- when you’re trying that hard, you’re actually avoiding something. So if you wrote up this huge post about the history and then like buried the link at the bottom, you’re guaranteeing that 50% of the people that see that huge post are never going to get to the point. They’re never going to see the product that you created.

Whereas if you just put up a few sentences and you’re like, Hey, here’s this thing, and you peak their interest a little bit and you don’t make them do a whole bunch of work, they are going to see that link.

CK: yeah, that’s a great point. So it’s something that I really haven’t thought of. The, which is the other side of the perspective.

😬 Here comes my sleep deprived mind still trying to make connections…

[21:23]

CK: Although. You know, on those lines when I was mitigate- trying to mitigate my anxiety last night…

There’s different tactics or strategies they can use. Like, you know, I was worried about the response I was going to get. And, you know, what if people were gonna think about it negatively or have some kind of criticism that’s gonna trigger me somehow.

But, you know, if you think about how you look back on the situation. So try to futurecast, basically, look forward into the future and picture yourself maybe a week from now and look back to, you know, maybe you did get some negative comments. And, you know, think about what you would feel like a week from now if you got negative comments and kind of feel how that would make you, you know, what your emotions would be around that and how that would make you feel.

And it helps kind of take you out of yourself, per se, and look at things from an outside perspective and not be so much in your own head and in your own emotions, and give you more of a rational outlook on things.

So, you know, if I think a week from now, what I’m going to think, looking back on the responses I’m going to probably look at today. You know, I’m thinking, you know, even though there’s negative stuff, I’ve gotten negative comments before and I’ve gotten criticism before and things turned out fine. And maybe I didn’t respond to them the way that I would have wanted to, or maybe, you know, I had some negative feelings at first, but you know, I came out of it fine. I learned something from it and I moved on and it wasn’t that big of a deal.

So, you know, if you look at things that way, you can- it’ll help you consider how irrational your present thinking is and, you know, help you broaden your perspective and look at things differently.

So just a little tip of my own anxiety mitigation strategies.

Pam: Cool.

CK: So yeah, I think that was freetalking. Did we have- did I miss anything or leave anything out there?

Pam: No, I think we’re good.

😬 That definitely didn’t come off like I wanted it to. I was still trying to process and articulate my thoughts on anxiety and sleep from before.

The right concept is there. I just don’t feel like I shared it effectively.

Practicing the practice, and other practices.

[23:55]

CK: Cool. Yeah. So we’re rolling right along and finally getting to the practice or the practicing segment, which I’ve kind of been neglecting. So before I’ve just been kind of using this third and last segment as providing some sort of opinion or commentary around the state of the world today, but I’m going to kind of loop that into this practicing segment in general. And you know, if there’s some pertinent information, I’ll put that out there.

But before, you know, I kept forgetting to mention like a practice tip or a challenge. And so I want to leave listeners today a tip and challenge around daily structure and routine and your schedule.

So, you know, we’ve been kind of staying in place or locked in or whatever you want to call it, for most of us, for the better part of a month now, right?

Pam: Yeah, it has been. Yep.

CK: At least, or just about. And so, you know, for me and Pam, we’ve been doing this (working from home) for over the past decade, so we’re- we have our structure and schedules and routine down in terms of working from home and being together at home pretty much almost 24/7… maybe 23/7.

Pam: We go to the bathroom separately.

CK: But, the thing is that- you’ll probably learn- is that you need to- and you’ve probably heard this from a lot of people, is that you need to retain structure and routine and have some kind of schedule. And you know, I don’t want to just keep reiterating that same stuff, but I kind of want to point out how this practice itself with the Practice podcast has actually helped me with my own structure.

So we’ve been doing this every week for the past eight weeks now?

Pam: Yeah.

CK: Two months! Holy cow!

And so, yeah, every week on Sundays we’ve been doing this and it’s kind of helped structure my weeks. And even like my thought patterns, I guess. And you know, it’s interesting because there’s some times where, you know, Pam, me and you, we’ll talk about the things that are crowding my mind and, you know, I’m trying to connect and…

Pam: Process.

CK: Yeah… theorize. And sometimes I’ll just kind of mull things over for awhile before I share it. And then sometimes- other times I’ll just tell you the rough idea of what I’m thinking, even though it might make sense- not make sense at the time.

But now with this structure, it’s a little weird because I think I’m processing a little more and processing a little more in a structured manner, because now we have this weekly session where I get to talk and reflect on different things.

And sometimes, like, I want to save stuff until the session. And then other times I’m, like, thinking, “okay, I don’t have this hashed out to the point yet where I want to share it.” So I don’t know if I’m articulating this well here, but the point is this practice itself, just doing it once a week and talking for a half an hour and reflecting has helped my entire week.

And so, you know, it’s stuff like that when you have things in place that you can look forward to and have a routine that helps you get into a flow and a rhythm where certain things start to get automated. And so, you know there’s good and bad that can come out of that. So you want to maintain perspective of the process.

And what I mean by good and bad is like, you know, if you start a routine and you get into it and it’s automated and you keep going about, you know, you might get that ingrained and not realize that, you know, things are shifting around you and you’re still sticking to the same routine that may not be pertinent to that point in time anymore.

So, you know, you want to stay ahead of things and be proactive and reflect on your routines every once in a while. But in general, I mean, it’s good if you have habits and routines that you can incorporate in order to automate things so that you don’t have to think about them and have them take up your brain bandwidth, and allow you the freedom to be creative or use your mind for more important things.

So… Oh yeah, go ahead.

Pam: One way that people can translate what you’re talking about into their personal lives right now while they’re at home with another person… Um, you know, we’re- a lot of people are used to leaving the house and going to work, and then they come home and they have their day to talk about with the other person. But right now they’re stuck in the same house, and so they’re together all day.

And for some people that can be a lot. Like, the other person maybe is like constantly trying to talk to you while you’re working or interrupting you, or you want to talk to them all day, but they’re working. And it can be like a conflict.

So, if they translate what we’re doing here with this: every Sunday we talk for the podcast. If they set- like, even though you’re at home, set a date night, set a conversation time. Even if it’s with your roommate, like, set a time when you guys know that you’re going to sit down and you’re going to talk to each other.

So that there’s not this, um, feeling of like, you’re ignoring me or I need more attention, or you’re in my space all the time. Like you have this time set aside. It’s a routine.

CK: Right. Yeah, that’s a great tip there. And I would add: do it on a podcast! Start your own podcast and do this, do what I’m doing. It’s fun! And there’s definitely something to it. I’m still, you know, working things out and trying to hash out all the different things and psychology that’s going into it, and that’s helping me.

Growth occurs during rest and recovery.

[23:55]

CK: But yeah, I’ve been more productive than ever. And that’s also why I hadn’t been sleeping so well the past week is that I just keep wanting to work. And so that’s another thing that you want to be aware of: is, you know, overworking yourself. Because the time when you grow is when you’re resting and you’re recovering.

So you know, you push yourself, whether it’s your physical body or your mind and exercise it to a point where, you know, you reach another level and you, you know, build muscle fibers or- well, actually you break down muscle fibers or I don’t know what the correlation in the brain is.

Pam: I hope you don’t break down brain cells.

CK: I know, but you’re- you’re like working different synapses and you know, taxing brain function.

So it’s the time when you rest, when your muscles rebuild and repair. And it’s, you know, when you sleep, when your brain’s repairing and reconsolidating memories and information. So you’ve got to remember to rest and have time for, you know, your- yourself to regenerate basically.

Pam: And that can be really hard when we’re working from home because there’s no separation of location. So- like having a routine to end your day so that you can wind down.

CK: Exactly. So yeah, even myself, I’m still working out my schedule, even though, you know, I’ve been working from home for the past decade and a half, I’m still iterating my schedule. And now that I have this new project, I’m gonna see how I can optimize my schedule so that that fits in, in an efficient manner.

And so, you know, I would challenge listeners to take stock of how they’ve been going about things for the past couple of weeks as they’ve been staying at home. Because by this time, you should probably have an idea of how things are going throughout your day and kind of notice patterns of behavior and yeah, take stock of your days.

See if you’re doing the same things. Or, you know, what part of the days you’re doing things, or what part of the days that you’re enjoying, and what part of the days that you’re being the most productive, and what part of the day is that you need rest. And if you start seeing patterns there, you know, try to jot those down or get some idea of that, and maybe next week I’ll come back and tell you what to do with that information.

That sound good?

Pam: Yeah, That sounds good.

😀 I actually didn’t do too bad with this segment! At first, I didn’t struggle too much because I was familiar with the subject I was talking about, but then I quickly realized that I was just as familiar with the matter I tried to articulate in the Freetalking segment.

🤔 I wonder if the Freetalking segment got me warmed up for this one.

Another one of my favorite resources.

[33:16]

CK: Cool. I just want to leave off with another resource for this whole pandemic. I know the past couple of weeks I’ve been recommending podcasts, and I’ve been forgetting an email newsletter that I get every day. I think it’s daily. I’m not sure if it comes out on the weekends, but daily during the week for sure. (Yep, just weekdays.)

And it comes out of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and they have a newsletter called Global Health NOW. And of course I’ll link to it in the show notes. But it’s just a really good summary of a lot of different news sources and, you know, it’s just a newsletter where they provide a lot of pertinent information.

And I’ve been subscribed to this for the past several years, many years, and it’s just a really good rundown of, like, good scientific evidence-based news sources. So that’s my recommendation for this week.

ℹ️ I also just came across this entire section dedicated to COVID-19 on the Johns Hopkins main website.

Outro.

[34:18]

CK: And Pam, do you have anything else you want to say?

Pam: No, I’m all good.

CK: Awesome. So thanks everybody for joining me on this adventure of positive reflection, agile podcasting, and functional lifestyle optimization.

Pam, where can people hit you up?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter @Pamela_Lund.

CK: And you can hit me up on twitter @cKdisco. And make sure to check out the show notes for this episode ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice, and let me know what you think of the website. Keep in mind that it’s still a work in progress, but I’d love to hear some constructive criticism.

And so that’s all for now. I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing.

Too-da-loo! ✌️

Pam: Too-da-loo!

CK: Yeah!

You want in on that too now, huh?