Everyday Systems Podcast

Everyday Systems #84: The Hygiene Hypothesis as the Explanation for Everything

Cure all your ailments with dirt, pain and danger

Everyday Systems #83: The No S Diet 2024

The No S Diet, from scratch, as if I’d never spoken or written about it before. Draft chapter for the upcoming Everyday Systems Compendium, and hopefully interesting and useful in its own right.

Everyday Systems #82: Clock & Calendar, Your Sword & Shield

Build habits by leaning on the clock and calendar rather than fighting against them. Beyond N and S days. Cutesy task phrases. Powerfully silly times. Calendar-First Tasking.

Everyday Systems #81: State of the Systems 2023

Annual update on all the Everyday Systems and how they are doing for me personally 

Everyday Systems #80: Antimantras & Repetitive Thought Injuries

I think I mix about 14 metaphors in this episode:  We’ve got a goose-stepping white bear baseball player with devil horns doing jiu jitsu on the death star. A ridiculous Chimera, if you put it all together. But maybe just the guardian-gargoyle image you need to keep the antimantras at bay.

Everyday Systems #79: My Pet Demon

Self-saboteur? Time to stop playing with your pet demons (maybe).

Everyday Systems #78: Spider Hunter, a CBT for Anxiety Game

Anxious? Here's a fun technique for getting over it. It's halfway between gamified mindfulness and exposure therapy.

Everyday Systems #77: Aristotelian Self-Portrait

Aristotle: "You are what you repeatedly do." Well, what do you repeatedly do? In this episode, an exercise for finding out.

Everyday Systems #76: My Friend, ChatGPT

Practice being human with AI

Everyday Systems #75: Apps for Mentats

Everyday Systems as Apps for Human Minds.

Everyday Systems #74: Tidiness for Demihumans

Four catchphrases for tidier habits

Everyday Systems #73: Demihuman

A lighthearted approach to imposter syndrome.

Everyday Systems #72: State of the Systems 2022

A little later and much shorter than last year.

Everyday Systems #71: Last Wordism

A two-word anti-mantra to snap you and your family out of automatic bickering

Everyday Systems #70: Surgical Flogging

Food logging: apparently it works. But it's torture to do long term. I discuss a way you can practice a limited, strategic, surgical form of food logging with the No S Diet (or any other diet) that gives you the benefits of food logging – which are real, potentially at least – without the protracted and probably futile misery.  

Everyday Systems #69: Shovelglove Recovery

After 20 years of swinging my sledgehammer injury-free, I discovered that that even Shovelglove can cause or at least be impacted by injury. How Shovelglove principles like "schedulalistically insignificant time "and "maintenance is more important that progress" have been key to my recovery.

Everyday Systems #68: How to be Ordinary

Be a Mensch, not a rockstar. It's surprisingly hard, even though you probably don't have any alternative.

Everyday Systems #67: Demogorgon Whack-a-mole

What to do when your appetites keep routing around your rules to contain them

Everyday Systems #66: Right Relationship with Robots

Technology for habits, and habits for technology. Also a story about my Roomba.

Everyday Systems #65: Mindful Bagful

A lighthearted Jedi mind trick for calming yourself down in certain mundane situations

Everyday Systems #64: State of the Systems 2021 Part 3: (Meta)

Meta Systems are systems for managing other systems: to track and boster them. Personal Punchcards, The Life Log, Mantrafication, and Loose Lips Sink Ships.

Everyday Systems #64: State of the Systems 20201 Part 3: (Meta)

Meta Systems are systems for managing other systems: to track and boster them. Personal Punchcards, The Life Log, Mantrafication, and Loose Lips Sink Ships.

Everyday Systems #63: State of the Systems 2021, Part 2 (Soul)

Soul systems are systems for detaching yourself from the frenzy of everyday life to reflect, for learning, for recovering, for devoting more of your limited time to what’s important, for figuring out what’s important to begin with. Systems discussed include: Audiodidact. The Study Habit. Demogorgon vs. Asmodeus, Timebox Lord, G-Ray Vision, VC Cat,  Posifactive and Weekend Luddite.

Everyday Systems #63: State of the Systems 2020, Part 2 (Soul)

Soul systems are systems for detaching yourself from the frenzy of everyday life to reflect, for learning, for recovering, for devoting more of your limited time to what’s important, for figuring out what’s important to begin with. Systems discussed include: Audiodidact. The Study Habit. Demogorgon vs. Asmodeus, Timebox Lord, G-Ray Vision, VC Cat,  Posifactive and Weekend Luddite.

Everyday Systems #62: State of the Systems 2021, Part 1 (Body & Spirits)

2021 was miserable in most respects, but it’s been another fantastic opportunity to test the true mettle of Everyday Systems. Part 1 reviews Body and Spirits systems: The No S Diet, Shovelglove, Urban Ranger, Lawful Good Biker, Glass Ceiling, Low Smoking.

Everyday Systems #61: VC Cat

An inspiringly ridiculous image to ward off the dreaded "what the hell" effect.

Everyday Systems #60:The Study Habit, Part 2 (Behavioral)

Specific techniques for making study a daily habit

Everyday Systems #59: The Study Habit

How to go from "study=cramming" to making learning a lifelong habit

Everyday Systems #58: Loose Lips Sink Ships

A helpful image from WWII propaganda to keep you from sabotaging your self-improvement efforts with premature talk.

Everyday Systems #57: Posifactive

All the self-help books ever written distilled into one word, with a note of enlightened self-mockery that makes the whole thing bearable:

Everyday Systems #56: Good Redundancy

Engineer intentional redundancy into your habit systems to make them fault tolerant.

Everyday Systems #55: The Lifelog

Habit tracking when apps or magic markers won't cut it

Everyday Systems #54: State of the Systems 2020

How pandemic proof are the Everyday Systems? A quick review of 14 systems and how they are holding up.

Everyday Systems 53: Timebox Lord

A system for balancing "infinite work" with "first things."

Everyday Systems #52: Demogorgon vs. Asmodeus

How to ingore both of the evil voices in your head and attain comic detachment from your psychomachia.

Everyday Systems #51: Contract Cards & Mantrafication

Reflect on what is giving you trouble with your self improvement system. Write a contract with yourself on a 4*6 index card. Record yourself speaking it. Listen to this recorded mantra every day.  

Everydays Systems #50: 2016 State of the Systems Check-In (Spiritual)

No S for the soul? 14-Year Jubilee updates on 8 "spiritual" systems: Weekend Luddite, Audiodidact, Chain of Self-command, Low Smoking, G-Ray Vision, Monthly Resolution, Lawful Good Biker and The Study Habit

Everyday Systems #49: State of the Systems 2016 (Physical)

It's been 14 years now since everyday systems first went online in 2002.   And I think that significant anniversary deserves some kind of acknowledgement.   So I think what I'm going to do to observe this is give a kind of "state of the systems" check-in episode, a brief tour of how all the everyday systems are still working for me, -- whether they're still working for me --  how I notice they're working for other people, and any additional insights I might have about them

Episode 48: The No S Diet Audiobook, Chapter 1 (Rough!)

Are my low podcast production values good enough to produce an audiobook? You be the judge! For this episode, an experimental reading of Chapter 1 of the No S Diet book. Let me know if a few tweaks here and there might do the trick, or if I had better rethink this whole project.

Everyday Systems #47: The Heroics of Tidiness

Habit is powerful. But is it always the answer? Is there room for one-time, decisive actions in the realm of self-improvement? I think there is -- but perhaps not quite where you expect it.

Everyday Systems #46: S-Days vs. Cheat Days

In which the subtle but crucial difference between S-days and Cheat Days is expounded upon.

Episode 45: Einstein's Soup

Everyday Systems #44: The Return of the General

Long term planning with index cards is back! You can now capture your entire life strategy, operations, and tactics in three index cards.

Everyday Systems #43: Scribal Filter and medium-term task management

No-tech medium term task managment with index cards.

42 Everyday Systems#42: Personal Punch Cards Redux

Low-tech, high-psychology productivity tracking gets even simpler.

Everyday Systems #41: The "What the Hell" effect and negative qualification

The "what the hell" effect sounds funny but it can seriously screw you up. How can everyday systems practitioners defend against it?

Everyday Systems #40: No Solitary Snacking -- Even on S days

Hate your S-days because they make you feel out of control? Here's a mod to help you enjoy them again.

Everyday Systems #39: Lawful Good Biker

Change your biker-alignment to Lawful Good. Be flamboyantly, comically observant of traffic rules.

Everyday Systems #38: 14 minutes of ANYTHING

Shovelglove without the sledgehammer. Or at least, without making the sledgehammer a requirement.

Everyday Systems #37: Mods and Tweaks Trilogy Part 3: When a mere mod isn't enough

How to roll your own everyday system from scratch. Introducing the idea of Systematic Moderation.