Confused Minimalist

Head of Labs at TMW Fascinated by the age in which we live. Technologist, writer, barefoot runner, wannabe photographer and serial hobbiest. Follow me on Twitter: @exmonkey

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THE SOLUTION TO A SELFISH WORKPLACE?

Reposted from https://livingunplugged.com/the-solution-to-a-selfish-workplace-unplugging

For the past year or so the Living Unplugged team have been theorising and exploring the downsides to an “always-on” culture driven by technology. For me the exploration has been incredibly eye opening. Whilst there wasn’t one key moment which led me down the unplugged route there are certainly some clear themes which, as they reoccurred across my social media feeds, led me to make some decisions about my smartphone and device usage. One of the most interesting of these is the “me, me, me” attitude. Even as I write this opening paragraph I am cringing at the number of times I have used the word “I” or “me”. The fact is that we have become an inherently selfish society.

A recent study published by Harvard University hypothesised that “People derive intrinsic value from communicating information about themselves to other people.” The study showed that “Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system”. Essentially they found that talking about ourselves gives us pleasure. Not only that, the percentage at which we talk about ourselves almost doubles when we are on social media. What this means is that the emotional rewards we get (likes, shares, comments etc) validate us talking about ourselves and make us do it more often.

Is email making it all about you? So what does this mean for the workplace? Well, I work in an agency. Most of our communications are done over email. In previous jobs I have had email, internal chat systems, open access and encouraged use of social media. All of which are supposed to make communication easier and more efficient but in a service based industry are we missing a fundamental point? That being that email, social, internal chats all encourage a more selfish outlook to communications. You are more inclined to use email to talk about what you’ve done rather than interact with colleagues and clients on what they’re doing. Could it be that if we unplug our communications and take a more analogue approach to communicating we could actually develop stronger working teams built on sharing of ideas?

Mad Men is to blame In the golden age of advertising, as romanticised by the Mad Men series (which I am currently re-watching) the meetings and face to face conversations are at the forefront of the communications process. What strikes me about this more analogue approach is that you’re twice as likely to listento a client or a colleague face to face than you are over an email or a digital communication because you’re less inclined to be broadcasting about yourself. This approach would surely be beneficial, and could in fact streamline production as teams would be more informed and prepared for the tasks at hand. Not only that, the turning back of the clock to a more analogue communications system would help to alleviate miscommunication of tonality, missed emails and could potentially help with the ever growing data overload we face in the digital era.  

Could this approach help with FOMO? It’s not just the “me, me, me” issue we face with digital communications. We are also in the grasp of a fear of missing out (FOMO) epidemic.  This information overload has led us to rely on email and digital communications to, paradoxically, provide both stress and relief. On the one hand our growing inboxes leave us feeling overwhelmed yet they validate our place in the office and we wear our email numbers like badges of honour. Too many and you’re stressed, too few and you’re worried you’re not valuable enough.

However, our email inboxes and the reliance we have on them means we are struggling with an overabundance of information. This means having to deal with issues in a disconnected way. Imagine you have a client who sends three emails. One is about budget, one is about a piece of content and one is about a future campaign. While all of these pieces of information are indeed related to the same thing our brain is having to focus on each one individually, working harder to process all the information in one go. We are simply not paying enough attention to all that information.

The flow of an analogue conversation around those three same issues would potentially allow us to ask questions, listen and process in a much shorter time period, leaving us more satisfied with the outcome of the communication.

Three ways to start exploring an unplugged workplace culture

Top down culture of minimal internal emailing – In order for a real shift to happen within a workplace it needs to come from, and be supported by, the top tiers of management. By setting an example of minimising internal emails and taking the initiative to discuss projects in person it’s possible to lead the culture change more effectively

Unplugged Friday – Setting a day for teams to reconnect regularly can help facilitate natural and informal meetings and collaboration.

Ditch the internal messaging services – Start paring back the digital communications. Helping to remove the temptation can be the catalyst your business needs.

Living Unplugged is not about tearing down technology, it is about reassessing its use and developing a healthier relationship with digital communications. In turn we believe that our workplaces and lives can improve, reducing stress and increasing productivity as we make that change.

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Living Unplugged

Living Unplugged is about providing you with the tools and the confidence to take back your love of food, without the guilt of dieting. To take pleasure in activity without the soul sapping feeling that exercise is punishment. To experience the sense of accomplishment in creating or mending somethin

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How to digitally detox with your children

One of the most heartbreaking moments of past few years was when my young son clambered into bed with me one morning and, after a brief cuddle, climbed over me and handed me my phone. He said to me “Here you go mummy, I found your phone”. It was then that I realised I used my phone in front of him w

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We are all super-mathematicians

To be filed under: things I think about when I run.

Today I went for a lunch time run through Piccadilly Circus and into St James Park. The first and last sections of my run take me through some extremely touristy bits of the West End. On a good day, dodging selfie taking tourists and office workers glued to their mobile devices is entertaining and challenging. On a bad day it’s down right annoying.

As I weaved through the crowds I started thinking about the mathematics involved in what I was doing. With no real conscious effort I was creating a working model of the n dimensional* space around me. To build the model I was tracking the positions of everyone in my field of view, their vectors, their interactions, the effect of traffic and stationary objects their route, the signage and traffic lights and then making probabilistic estimates of each individual’s deviance from their established paths based on my experience of crowds, people and their interactions with each other.

Once I had this working model, I inserted myself into it and plotted a course through the crowds whilst constantly updating the model as new information became available (enabling me to describe a vector for myself with a rolling suite of last minute corrections and evasive manoeuvres that I might need to employ if any of the pedestrians did something off plan – like stop to catch a Pokémon). The net effect being that I weaved through the crowd without any physical contact.

And here’s the thing. We all do this. Every single day. Mathematicians do it, bus drivers do it, children in playgrounds do it (less well). We are all capable of building impossibly complex, multi-dimensional real time models of the universe around us and then querying it to extract the information we need to get from point A to point B or to catch a ball or drive a car or something.

The weird thing is that if I try to apply to much conscious control over this process I invariably end up smashing into a German tourist like a speeder bike hitting a tree on Endor. This amazing mathematical facility is only available to our unconscious or autonomic part of our brain.

This got me thinking about a moderately interesting Radio 4 program (Great Lives, I think) I listened to this week. It was about a famous 20th century Indian mathematician called Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was a man who, with no formal training, was able to intuitively solve some of the most intractable mathematical problems of his day.

Srinivasa was unable to provide any proof of how he arrived at his solutions, and saw his skill as being related to Indian mysticism rather than the more academic way we approach such areas. In a very true sense, he was genius. Like Mozart or Michelangelo he was seemingly blessed with an extraordinary talent beyond what most of us would ever be able to comprehend.

So my train of thought got me to this: What if we could tap into the ability to create these nth dimensional models, feed in data and then get an answer? Our brains are clearly able to do it, and yet it’s a facility that is inaccessible to most of us.

Maybe this is how Srinivasa was able to do what he did. Maybe his type of genius relied on a connection between the part of his mind that was able to create these crazily complicated mathematical models and the conscious question-asking bit.

That’s probably a couple too many maybes, but how amazing would it be to work out how to make this kind of connection in your mind. It would certainly help with calculating restaurant bills.

*for the purposes of this brain burp, I am defining the n dimensions of the model as being x, y, z, time and the various effects of unpredictable human beings. Apologies to real mathematicians.

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Back to basics

Going oldskool today and for the next 7 days as an experiment to get a sense of my smartphone dependence.

I, like many others, find that I am habitually checking the screen, scrolling through endless social posts etc. It's become less like a communication device and more like a transitional object.

Obviously I'm not giving up laptops or iPads, and all my calls are forwarded to my newish £15 Nokia, but I'm not around on whatsapp, and emails may have to wait for an hour or two!

Even now, only a couple of hours in I'm finding that I keep digging the phone out of my pocket and looking blankly at the tiny screen only to remember that all I'll see is the date and time.

I'm interested to see how long I last :)

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Podcasts!

It’s been a weird podcast week, with yours truly participating in two.

The first is a trends podcast called Viewpoint by TMW Unlimited - listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/tmwunlimited/viewpoint-episode-1-retail-innovation

The second was a panel debate I took part in as part of the Spikes Asia festival of creativity in Singapore (post to follow): https://soundcloud.com/creativepool/creative-debates-agencies-only-talk-about-innovation

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Yesterday saw the news that 52 per cent of the UK wants to leave Europe. I should probably state from the outset that I was very much one...

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The European Referendum: It’s not a real debate.

This is not a debate It’s just a bunch of people who I would ordinarily not listen to…

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How to build a clay wood fired pizza oven

Or at least, how I did it....

I should set the scene a little. There are several pivotal life moments I remember with absolute clarity.

My mum's tray baked pizzas (made using tomato paste)

The day I discovered Parmesan cheese (and some years later when I discovered real parmesan cheese)

The first time I ordered a 12inch pizza at the newly opened Pizza Place in Bognor (circa 1985) and ate it. The secret I happened up was, eat fast so you stomach doesn't know what's hit it.

My first ever takeaway pizza (I carried it home under my arm like a book, only to find that all the toppings had slid off).

My first monthly pay check. I worked out I could afford takeaway pizza every night of the month.

My first ever Domino's (at my aunt's flat in London) in the late eighties. Amazing.

The first time I made my own sourdough pizza crust.

My first Pizza Pilgrim's pizza.

Yeah, I like pizza. Pizza is the food that can always be different, can always be simple or complex, but when done well is delicious.

So one of the first things I wanted to do once we got a garden big enough was build a pizza oven. There are some good reasons for building an oven. Firstly, you can make pizzas in it. Then you can use it for bread, roasts, casseroles. Weirdly anything you'd use a regular oven for.

I remember seeing a River Cottage episode where they built an oven out of clay, and the thought has been rattling around my head ever since. So after much internet information binging, I decided to take the plunge.

Stage one: The plinth.

I'm super impatient, so I ignored all the advice about laying a concrete slab and building foundations and decided to build the plinth on top of the patio area in my garden. I didn't build the patio, so I don't know what's underneath it, but hopefully it will take the weight.

I managed to buy some cheap concrete blocks from my neighbour - about 65 of them. I only used around 40 in the end.

Because I'm quite lazy I settled on a size of 120cm X 150cm. Laziness made me stick to a size dictated by the length of available lintels (for supporting the base) and the length of concrete blocks (to avoid having to cut too many of them).

I decided to make the plinth four courses high, although the last course sits on top of the lower part of the base, forming the walls for the insulation and hearth layers.

I inserted the lintels at 60cm intervals to support 60cm2 concrete paving slabs.I also elected to build a decorative arch to form an entrance to a wood store under the oven. The previous owner of our house had been a keen collector of bricks, so all of the bricks for the arch I dug up from the garden, minecraft style.

Making the arch was fun. I sketched out the shape on cardboard, tested the size with the bricks and then used old pallet wood to create a former to build the arch around. It seemed to work!

The paving slabs were mortared on to the top of the lintels and blocks (and then expertly tested by Toby).

I then laid some more bricks (Minecrafted from the garden again) on the arch. Looks half decent from a distance, but don't show it to any professional bricklayers.

The next stage involved drinking wine. This is a skill I picked up in my late teens, so both Laura and I felt able to share the responsibility of this one.

Wine bottles make an excellent insulation layer. The idea being that the heat from the hearth shouldn't leatch out through the concrete paving slabs, and therefore ensuring the oven stays hotter for longer. One adage I've constantly found whilst reading up on this subject is, you can't have too much insulation. Or in my case, wine.

Now for the hearth. So this caused me a great deal of stress. What kind of brick to use?! Firebricks are the best option, but cost £2.50 each. I need 50 bricks, so £125 + another £50 for delivery was out of the question. Others have used reclaimed storage radiator bricks - unfortunately there weren’t any available in my area.

In the end I decided to buy class B solid engineering bricks. They’re baked at very high temperatures, which makes them super hard and they don’t have any holes in them. So whilst they’re not ideal in terms of the correct material for an oven, given I’m only going to be firing it up a couple of times a month I decided that they would be fine. I also reasoned that after a couple of years, I may want to rebuild a brick pizza oven, so I could start saving now!

I laid them on sand in a herringbone pattern (to avoid catching the pizza peel on the edges). This proved to be fiddly, but I got quite good at cutting bricks with my angle grinder by the end.

Can you spot the rookie error? More on this later.

The Dome!

Exciting bit now! I went and bought 175kg of terracotta clay from a pottery supply shop near me (about £87), and 14 bags of sharp sand.

The clay for the first layer should be 1:2 clay sand mix, and the only way to do this is to ‘puddle’ it with your feet.

(or the feet of your family).While they were working the clay and sand together, I started on the sand former. My plinth is 1200mm wide, so the size of my oven needs to be 800mm in diameter (inside), to allow for the three 100mm layers of clay on the outside.

I marked out the oven with some string and chalk, then piled the sand on (about 8 bags). I used a stick with the height marked in tape (40cm) stuck in the middle as a guide.

Then I covered the sand with damp newspaper to stop the sand drying out while we applied the clay/sand mix. This is done by making clay ‘bricks’ - more like thick, short snakes. You start at the bottom and work round and round the former until you get to the top, punching the clay to make the joints as tight as possible.

Then I left it until the next day (about 20hours).

The moment of truth (well one of them anyway). The door should be around half the internal oven diameter wide by 63% of the internal oven height, high. For me this was 40cm x 25cm. I cut out the shape and then spent a nervous hour scooping out the sand (saved in bags for the final layer of clay render).

The dome kept it’s shape! So I lit a small fire inside and marvelled at my new oven!

This is where I got a bit carried away (and should have read more on how to dry out my clay oven). I kept the fire going all afternoon, and by the evening got cocky. I added in too much wood and the oven started to show cracks around the top.

Now, i’d read that cracks are normal, but it didn’t stop me stressing out about it. I slapped some clay mix on them and let the fire go out. The next day, the cracks weren’t that visible so I think I got away with it. We shall see.

Back to my rookie error. I made the oven with a non-heat bearing surface in front of the entrance. The plan was to lay 300mm square quarry tiles on this as a small work surface (suitable for tools etc). So far so good. Quarry tiles purchased, offered up and... Oh, the tiles sit above the hearth. This means that there's be a lip down to the oven cooking surface. Now this may be ok, but frankly I think I'd end up regretting the mistake. My solution, cut out some of the concrete blocks in front of the hearth and use some smaller tiles to create a slope from the quarry tiles down into the oven. I think it looks ok.

Chimney, arch and insulation

Before going any further, I needed to create the door arch and chimney. This turned out to be way easier than I thought. I used a chunk of foam insulation to create a (wonky) arch former and then used the clay sand mix as a mortar to hold the bricks (Minecrafted from my garden again) in place. The chimney (a clay pipe from the salvage yard) balanced on the front of the dome and the top of two of the arch bricks (halved to create an opening) was also mortared in place with clay. The whole lot was surrounded by more clay mix.

Now I could apply the insulation layer. This is where thing get messy. I find that when clay water starts to fly, the number of keen volunteers seems to reduce proportionally. So when I spent an hour mixing lumps of clay with water in a bucket using a plaster mixer attachment on my drill, I did so alone. This clay slip (the consistency of yogurt) was then poured into a wheelbarrow containing two large bags of pet bedding wood chips, and mixed up like cheap granola. I was aiming for a mix that could be shaped and applied to the clay. Initially I worried it was to wet, but after couple of days in the sun, the newly applied insulation layer was pretty hard.

Before the final clay layer was applied I also cemented in some terracotta tiles round the edge of the plinth. The next layer would sit on top of the tiles making a nice seal (or at least that was the idea).

One week later, and we're on the home stretch! This time I had no help with the clay puddling, so I'm not convinced I did a particularly thorough job. However, the resultant bricks made by myself and Laura (and stamped on from time to time by Toby) seemed to do the job.

Yes the arch is a bit wonky. Yes it has some ‘rustic’ elements (by rustic read: bodged), but by and large I’m happy with it as a first attempt.

It needs a week of drying (longer if this rain doesn't let up!), a door, some tidying up... but it’s done! Hopefully the next pizza oven related post will be to show off the first cooking efforts!

Materials list:

40 concrete blocks £40 50 solid class b engineering bricks (for the hearth) £25 4 large terracotta tiles £14 2 lintels £18 Assorted minecrafted backyard bricks £0 25 small terracotta tiles £14 175 kg clay £87 14 bags of sharp sand £30 2 bags builders sand £4 1 bag of cement £6 2 large bags of pet bedding wood chip £10 2 tarps £8 1 plaster mixer drill attachment £10 2 stone cutting discs for my angle grinder £10 1 bucket £4 1 clay pipe £6

Total - £286

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Don’t know what Project Tango is?

Take a look at this to find out more. http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11663654/google-project-tango-expansion-vr-indoor-mapping-android

Google wants to make this kind of technology ubiquitous on smartphones. It’s pretty easy to see the kind of applications that 3D mapping abilities offer.

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Guest post: Dear London, it's not me, it's you.

An anonymous guest post from someone who has their priorities entirely correct.

Dear London,

It’s not me, it’s you. I thought for a long time it was me; introverted, awkward, possibly a bit lazy, but it turns out it’s not me at all.  I have decided working in London is not something to strive for, to enjoy and feel privileged to be doing. Let me explain why.

I moved out of London last year. I now have a home in Kent. I make use of the commuter facilities offered. Delayed trains, overpriced tickets, grumpy fellow commuters and lets not forget the noxious gasses that seem flow from those same commuters butts throughout the entire journey (a particular highlight I must say). I have twice in the last week had to call on my network of friends to pick up my son from nursery as “train faults” continually disrupt my travel. 

However, I am not alone. So many people suffer the same commuting woes. So many have to forgo a life in order to earn enough money to cover the costs of travel, childcare and mortgages. To you who do it without complaint I applaud you. You’re amazing.

Maybe it’s not the commute wholly. Maybe after being caught on a delayed train and fighting my way onto a tube train where I endured 10mins of a man stroking and rubbing up against my bum was what pushed me over the edge. Getting to work feeling a bit dazed and wondering why I didn’t turn around and clock him one. Wondering if I was overreacting “it was a busy train” or “maybe he didn’t realize”. As an FYI he knew he was doing it. It was just another dehumanizing and uncomfortable moment in my week.

It’s still not it though. Not the whole of it. I think what really gets me is the ridiculous nature of the whole scenario. Being connected to the office, clients, global networks, having access to everything I need at any point. Working on trains, emailing from the bathroom, checking Facebook in bed… we have 24/7 access to the world and everyone in it. We can connect on Skype, Slack, Lync, email, text, Whatsapp, phone, LinkedIn so why the hell to drag ourselves away from the places we want to be to ferry ourselves to cities where we are made miserable and stressed. Don’t get me wrong, if you love the city that’s great. Enjoy it. If you don’t then shouldn’t you be where you feel happy, calm and productive?

Why do we keep doing it this way? It makes us so unhappy. Recently my son was unwell. My partner and I both decided to work from home. This meant we could take it in turns to take calls and return emails and get on with our work whilst still being there for our son. It was one of the happiest and most productive days I have ever worked. We even managed to sit down for a sandwich together at lunch.  Imagine if this was the way our culture worked; imagine if we could balance work and life like this. Imagine how much less we’d resent that commute if it was only twice a week rather than five times and imagine not being greeted with jealous glares after a day working from home. Imagine simply having the option, and not just an option of “flexible working hours” but a real culture shift in favour of life and work coming together in harmony.  This is the dream.

So London, I am leaving you for good.  It’s not me, it’s you. You’re a broken system and you don’t work. Not for me, and not for my family. I won’t miss you.

Kind regards,

  A working parent 

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Mindset and Sacrifice

Exercise, diet and mindset.

Of these three components, if you get the last one wrong you may as well not bother with the previous two. You may lose some weight, you may run 5km for a couple of weekends, but if you don’t have the right mindset any improvements you make to your health and fitness will be fleeting.

Mindset is the most important part of any undertaking - learning a new skill, giving up smoking, saving money… If you go into any endeavour with the view that you’re making a sacrifice, then you will always be looking forward to the moment when the sacrifice is over and you can ‘reward’ yourself once again. Depending on your habits that reward will either be a massive blowout weekend of chocolate and pizza, a ‘well I’ve earned it’ cigarette or a can of Coke and a Mars bar (my personal mid morning treat when I was in my twenties).

My smoking mindset

When I finally gave up smoking it wasn’t using patches or gum, it was a simple switch in my mindset. I realised that not smoking a cigarette wasn’t a sacrifice. Feeling better, breathing better, was the reward. It turned out that smoking had been the sacrifice all along. Once I worked that out, the three or so days of feeling grouchy wasn’t nearly as bad as the adverts for Nicorette would have us believe. Don’t get me wrong, that change in mindset was a long time coming. I’d tried patches, gum, inhalators… The worst method is ‘will-power’ - because it sets you up to fail. Will-power suggests that if you fail, you’re weak; and if you’re weak, well then you may as well give up and resign yourself to a life time of smoking.

Even the term ‘giving up’ tells us that we are sacrificing a lovely bit of our lives! When we smoke, we ‘give up’ feeling well. We ‘give up’ smelling like a human being. We ‘give up’ £8 a day.

In the end I was able to change my mindset because smoking was making me feel unwell. I realised that my sacrifice was not being able to go through the day without pain. After that, stopping was easy.

Eating clean isn’t a sacrifice

Is the shaky sugar crash feeling you get mid morning and mid afternoon lovely? Do you look forward to it? We can get rid of that feeling quickly by eating a Mars bar, or a granola bar or any one of a million products designed to keep our blood sugar bumping along. However it’s a vicious circle.

We all know this: You eat something high in refined carbohydrates (like sugar or white flour). Your body produces insulin to convert as much of it into fat as possible (because we’re designed to store energy for the days when no food is available - except we in the west never see those days). The sugar levels drop, but the insulin in our blood persists and we feel crashy. Our bodies know what we need. Refined carbohydrates! So we eat an energy bar, or down an energy drink (so much better for us than a chocolate bar and a Coke right!) and we feel better!

Eating the bar-o-carbs feels great. Refined sugars in drinks and snack bars hit our blood stream super fast. It literally feels like a lovely drug saturating our systems. Unfortunately it’s a cycle that has a long term effect on our health and wellbeing.

The sugar is stored as fat by the liver, which has to work hard to process all this stuff. The constant high levels of insulin cause our cell membranes to become less permeable to insulin, which means our bodies have to produce more of it (another vicious cycle), and ultimately we put ourselves at risk of type 2 diabetes.

To me, it seems fairly obvious that in order to enjoy your chocolate bars, the sacrifice you make is that feeling of crashiness, the extra fat stores and the eventual decent into long term ill health.

Eating clean is simply eating freshly prepared food. Nothing faddy, nothing expensive. No superfoods, no weird unpleasant berries or deep fried kale (although I have discovered kale is a delicious ingredient in stews and curries). Eating clean is not getting a jar of Dolmio pasta sauce, or eating a Mc Breakfast or an Uncle Ben’s stir-fry pot.

It just requires a little more thought about shopping and menu planning, and at the weekend, after a great week of freshly prepared meals and lovely packed lunches what’s your treat? You’ve been eating treats all week! The weekend is just the same, except maybe you cook something that would take to long on a work evening! Why? Because you’ve not made a sacrifice, you’ve reclaimed control over the food you put in your body.

This isn’t about will-power

We hide behind phrases like ‘I wish I had the self discipline that person has’. In using words like discipline and will-power, we create and reinforce this culture of sacrifice around healthier living.

After spending a couple of weeks eating well and taking time to exercise, you will come to resent to horrible effect that eating a Tesco cupcake has on your system, which makes it way easier to say ‘pass’ when the inevitable tray of chemical tasting supermarket ’treats’ gets left on the end of the row of desks by the feeder in your team.

Will-power is not required when you start to appreciate the sacrifice you’ll have to make when you eat crap and do nothing.

Running isn’t stupid

We see people who run and we do one of several things.

We laugh at them for the stupidity of running at lunch time or in the pissing rain. Sitting on a bench eating a snack and laughing at runners is the best way to make yourself feel better about sitting on a bench eating a snack

We say how much we admire them for their superhuman fitness, and in doing so put their achievements out of reach of our own abilities. This is a classic way of subverting our own ambitions and abilities

We marvel at the time spent by these people and wish (although not to hard) that we had that time to spend too.

Anyone can run. If you have legs you can run (and if you don’t, there are always options). It’s super simple to stack up reasons why we shouldn’t and yet human beings are designed to run, we’re uniquely adapted in the mammalian world to run long distances. What we’re not designed for is sitting in chairs staring at screens for 8 hours a day followed by 4 hours of sitting on a sofa staring at a screen.

Running costs very little. Requires no gym membership and minimal equipment. Pretty much everyone owns a pair of trainers and a t-shirt.

If you can’t run, walk. Then try running.

One of the biggest problems we face is that the people whose exercise habits we admire seem like they must be natural runners, and nature hasn’t made us a natural anything. In truth, we are seeing people who got over this exact same belief and went running anyway. Then they got fitter. Nothing is beyond our reach.

Spending time on yourself isn’t a sacrifice

A lot of people will complain that they don’t have time to menu plan, cook, go running. Firstly I would counter this with a question: What is more important, the extra bit of work you can get done by coming home late every night or your health and happiness?

None of us would say the work is more important, and yet as individuals we think our situation is unique. We alone have a job that is so important, that we have to spend those extra hours on it. We will one day be more organised, or get more support in our role so that we can have more time to look after ourselves.

We are fucking over our future selves for something that, in all probability, we won’t even remember in 6 months time. Will your future self thank you for postponing making the changes to your life that you could have made years before? No. Your future self will be too busy working late and fucking over their future future selves.

Unless you are on the brink of curing cancer, your work is not important. Elevating the importance of that thing you just spent your lunch hour doing above your health and happiness is seriously messed up.

Thing you worked on over lunch: Forgettable and transient and will still be there after lunch.

Health and happiness: Literally all you have in the world. You have one life, no do-overs.

No rational person would ever put the first of these before the other.

If you think that the work will decrease, it won’t. If you think that taking 45 minutes to go running at lunch time will impact the amount of work you have to do, it won’t. There will always be more to do, so you may as well face it with a healthier mind and body. Research continually shows us that fitter, healthier people are more productive.

I will start on Monday

We’ve all done this. “I will make X change in my life…. next week”. You feel great because you’ve made a positive decision. Which is almost as great as actually doing something (except it’s clearly not). Next week comes, but we have a hard day at work, or get invited to an all-you-can-eat dim-sum buffet. So we postpone it for another week. And another and another.

Don’t wait for the right time. The right time is the moment you decide to do it. However do it with the right mindset. Do it in the knowledge that you’re not killing it for a month to get into a suit or a wedding dress or some beach wear, but that you’re doing it because you’re sick of sacrificing your health and happiness (and the health and happiness of future-you) for the dubious pleasure of eating a forgettable Pret meal-deal over your keyboard so you can work through lunch on something you won’t remember a week from now.

Parting thoughts (some of which have been stolen from inspirational Pinterest posts - don’t judge me)

“Fitness isn’t a punishment, it’s a blessing. [Good] Nutrition isn’t restrictive, it’s healing (and delicious). Health isn’t a one size fits all thing and may not look the same for everyone but it is something that’s worth fighting for.”

“I wish I’d spent more time doing work stuff rather than taking time to feel mentally and physically better, eating delicious fresh food and enjoying the benefits a long, mentally and physically active life spent with friends and family”, said no person on their deathbed ever.

Your mindset is the single thing stopping you from making the change future-you deserves. Not next week. Not for one month (with ‘treat blow outs’ every weekend) and not because it’s to hard or to much of a sacrifice.

Be completely honest with yourself. Ignore the voice of your ego or your friends. If you are genuinely completely happy with your level of fitness and health, they stay doing what you’re doing. 

If not, don’t procrastinate.

Stop making sacrifices. Start rewarding yourself.

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Those of us lucky enough to work in a big agency all know the form. Every year a small delegation of creatives and account people will be...

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VIVOBAREFOOT is crowdfunding

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Everything that’s wrong with quantified self wearable tech insights

This was going to be a snarky twitter post - I’m good at those, watch out Southeastern Trains! - but I realised this is a subject worth exploring more fully. Those who know me are probably bored by now of my constant banging on about ‘Contextual Utility’. Contextual utility is my take on a shift that’s been occurring in marketing circles for some time now. 

Consumers are sick of being spammed by brands with cleverly purchased Facebook ads, retargeted banners, endless emails…. marketing has run it’s course. Marketers have abused every new channel until consumers literally cannot take any more. You only have to look at the increase in spend on the ad-blocking technology sector (https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/) to see how much consumers don’t want to be marketed at any more. What really confuses me is that marketers and media buyers are also consumers (well, most of them). And as consumers, we hate the spam, the clickbait and the mindless retargeting - and yet we still do it for our clients. 

This is where I believe contextual utility is not only an opportunity for brands, it’s a necessity. 

The best way to create meaningful relationships with your potential consumers is to build trust. You cannot build trust through selling stuff, but you can build trust by making their lives easier. It is by looking at the problems consumers face and providing them with some kind of solution or content, something that makes that a moment of their day that little bit better, that brands can create these meaningful relationships. 

Contextual Utility is the lens through which all marketing activity should be viewed. And if brands aren’t making consumers lives even slightly better, they’re adding to the noise. 

Utility baked in

The thought that got me writing this was actually inspired by yet another ‘insights’ email from Withings, a brand that is all about utility. 

I own a Withings Smart Body Analyser (http://www.withings.com/uk/en/products/smart-body-analyzer - basically a connected scale with a bunch of other sensors in it). I also own a Sony Smartwatch (my review here: http://marccurtis.tumblr.com/post/113705145931/sxsw-with-a-smartwatch), which can track my activity (running, cycling etc). I love both of these things because I feel more in control of my quest to become a little bit fitter and a little bit leaner. 

Both of these devices can feed the data they collect into other platforms and turn them into pretty graphics. I particularly like the Withings site because I can manually enter blood pressure and other readings.    In essence, both of these devices and their associated apps are all about utility, however neither of them is providing true contextual utility. Something which, in my opinion, weakens their relevance to less obsessed (read: normal) consumers. 

To illustrate, take a look at my weekly insights email from Withings: 

Firstly, it’s telling me I’ve done well to lose some weight. That’s nice. But then it tells me I should set reminders to weigh myself more frequently as research shows that regular weight checks aids weight loss. Except I use the scales every day, so are they suggesting I do it twice a day? That can’t be healthy. The next panel is telling me how many steps I’ve done. It suggests I should do more. Why? Where’s the insight telling me what that will achieve? Under this is a tip asking me if I have high blood pressure and telling me that regular exercise will reduce it. This appears directly above the panel showing my blood pressure. Which is far from high. 

Then they chuck in an advert for their watch. 

All in all, Withings has completely failed to use any of the context I’ve provided them with (my data, my demographic info etc) to provide anything approaching a real insight. Google Fit is no better.

All the ‘insights’ tell me is the numbers. These are not insights, these are stats. And given the amount of data this app could collect (physical activity, phone use, images, chat, social media etc), it’s a staggering opportunity missed.

Using this data, and correlating it to other information I could provide - like age, medical history, diet etc - either of these devices could give me small nudges towards a healthier life. For example, “If you walk 100 more steps today, your chance of having a stroke goes down by 2%" 

Take a look at how QuitNow, a free app that helps people stop smoking does it. Users are nudged towards a healthier life by being shown quick wins, medium term benefits and (in the case of returning your lungs to a pre-smoker level of cancer risk), long term goals. 

The whole experience is gamified. One user I’ve spoken to says that whenever she feels like having cigarette she stops because she knows she will have to reset her scores. It’s like losing your Candycrush progress and starting at level one. 

Utility is what people want when they buy devices like a Withings analyser or a Sony Smartwatch. Contextual utility is what will make devices like these continually relevant to the user. 

With a high proportion of wearable tech being consigned to the bedside draw within a couple of months, manufacturers like Withings and data owners like Google need start doing more than just reflecting the data they collect back at the user.

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I'm not mental: Why I carry an EDC pouch

There's a couple of things I need to clear up in the interests of full disclosure. I tend to do things that make people think I'm odd. When my colleagues ask what I did at the weekend, they seem unable to process the answer without either laughing or looking concerned. My partner thinks I make choices that intentionally make my life more difficult for us (although she doesn't complain about the taste of the sourdough bread). 

I also tend to carry a knife of some kind. I should qualify that by saying that I almost always have about my person, a multitool. This essential pocket item has pliers, screwdrivers, scissors and yes, a couple of blades. It's basically a suped up Swiss Army knife. I do not consider knives like this to be weapons, I consider them to be tools. Anyone who spends any time around me will have (probably quite recently) had cause to borrow my Gerber Multitool - and definitely not because they're feeling stabby. 

Cool, glad we got those to things out of the way. 

Normal people (and by that I mean you), will not have spent any time thinking about your EDC. EDC stands for Every Day Carry. It's a term that describes what some people will always have about their person. Generally it refers to a set of items that the person in question considers essential to their everyday life. Your EDC is probably your phone, keys and wallet. However, there is a certain type of person who will spend a lot of time thinking about what constitutes essential.

This type of person may be into wilderness camping, they might be a gear nerd, they might be a prepper (more common in the US - people who are convinced that society is on the verge of collapse and they are preparing for that day by hoarding supplies and building their defences) or they might just be someone who possibly thinks to much about what can happen and how they might be ready for it. 

This type of person hates suddenly finding themselves ill equipped to deal with an unexpected situation - situations that can range from removing the screwed down battery cover on a toy train all the way up to terrorist attack in London leading to a complete failure of transport infrastructure.

I am the last type of person. I do like camping and hiking, and love to hone my skills by taking as little kit with me as possible, but I'm not a full on prepper. I'm not preparing for the zombie apocalypse. I just don't ever want to be the guy who ends up failing for want of a torch or a screwdriver.

After years of struggling to keep track of all the bits and bobs that I keep in pockets, bags and coats I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a pouch to keep everything together in one, easy to grab place. Something that I can chuck into whatever bag I'm using today and, at a pinch attach to my belt if I need to travel light (and look like an American tourist). So I purchased my first EDC pouch (a One Tigris EDC if you're interested).

Here's a list of what I keep in it. It's a collection of objects I would ordinarily carry, plus a few bits that I think I should carry. All of these items are things that I already had in various bags and pockets. The pouch itself is the most expensive item, costing £14.

(From left to right)

£1 screw driver pen from Maplin - with jeweller sized bits 

Biro/iPad stylus Permenant marker 

Leuchtturm1917 Notebook 

Opinel no8 folding knife 

LED torch (£1.80 Amazon) 

Gerber multitool 

Pair of latex surgical gloves 

DC4 Fallkniven sharpening stone 

Altoids tin containing:        

Compass        

Candle       

IKEA pencil        

Matches and strike        

Fresnel lens        

Section of inner tube rubber        

Water purification tablets        

Needle and thread        

Scapel        

Mini folding knife 

Fabric plasters 

Wound dressings 

Tissues 

Antihistamines 

Paracetamol 

Swedish fire steel with paracord lanyard 

Lighter 

Paracord 

Two plastic food bags 

What I have tried to do is create a compact package containing all the things I might need both on a day to day basis (multitool, notepad, pens etc) and in the event of some kind of unpredictable situation (basic first aid kit, water purification tabs, fire lighting kit etc).

This is the pouch I will grab from my bag when you need me to repair your glasses, need a hay fever tablet or want to open a stubborn Amazon package. It's also the pouch that will get me out of a sticky situation, will give me the edge I need to get home when the only way out of London is on foot or administer first aid without worrying about infectious body fluids.

You will almost certainly be chuckling about my EDC pouch having read this, thinking what a mentalist I am for carrying this little bag with me wherever I go. Right up until you ask me for help.