Everyday Systems Podcast

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.

Everyday Systems #36: Mods and Tweaks Trilogy Part I: How To Tweak

Still want to tweak an Everyday System? Here's how.

Everyday Systems #35: Mods and Tweaks Trilogy Part I: To Tweak Or Not To Tweak

Want to modify an Everyday System? It's possible -- but risky, as this episode emphasizes. Subtitled: "In Praise of Vanilla."

Everyday Systems #34: S-days Gone Wild

Feel like over the top S-days are undoing all your hard work during the week? Here's how to diagnose and correct this problem.

Everyday Systems #33: 2007 Annual Compliance Review

How well do I practice what I preach? What level of compliance is necessary for big picture success? What's the hardest everyday system? I attempt to answer these questions in my first annual self performance review.

Everyday Systems #32: The Bigger (8x11) Picture

Just as your daily task list should fit on a single 3x5 index card (see Chain of Self Command and Personal Punch Cards), your life strategy should fit on an single 8x11 sheet of paper.

Everyday Systems #31: The best piece of exercise equipment you can buy

You may think you know the answer to this already -- or at least, the answer I am going to give you. But you're probably wrong. Because it's not a sledgehammer. Or even a sledgehammer with a sweater wrapper around it. It's a timer.

Everyday Systems Podcast #30: Introducing the HabitCal

Track your habits with this free, simple, and visually compelling online tool.

Everyday Systems Podcast #29: Top 5 health and fitness books (sort of)

I've been asked to talk about the top five health and fitness books I've read. Unfortunately I don't think I've read that many health and fitness books in my entire life, and they certainly weren't all worth ...

Everyday Systems Podcast #28: a 90% diet solution in 2 words

90% of our increased calorie consumption since 1977 has come from snacking. So snacking is not only the biggest problem in terms of dietary excess, it is almost the entire problem.

Everyday Systems Podcast #27: Audiodidact (Output)

Talk to yourself -- and record it.  Why?  Autotherapy. Catch all those great ideas that would have gotten away otherwise. Nag yourself into doing impossible tasks. Keep an even-keel diary that reflects a broader range of experience. Give serious books the serious attention they require.

Everyday Systems Podcast #26: Audiodidact (Input)

No time to read? Hate mindless but necessary chores? Solve both problems at once by listening to audiobooks while you do housework.

Everyday Systems Podcast #25: Compound and Atomic Tasks

Consolidate well-understood routine tasks into compound tasks. Break up poorly understood novel tasks into more atomic components.

Everyday Systems Podcast #24: Put the Scale in Perspective

How I lost 10 pounds, overnight, without even trying.

Everyday Systems Podcast #23: Intelligent Dietary Defaults

Convenience is stronger than you are. Accept this fact. But with a little planning, the convenient thing doesn't have to be too awful. Case in point: "optimize your oatmeal."

Everyday Systems Podcast #22: In Defense of "Failure"

Stop using evasive euphemisms. Own up to "failure" or you become it.

Everyday Systems Podcast #21: Extreme Moderation

Moderation isn't mushy. Learn from extremists by drawing hard lines -- just draw them in different places. Get the clarity of cold turkey abstinence without the sweeping deprivation.

Everyday Systems Podcast #20: When you don't have 14 minutes

No time to exercise? Get philosophical. Use enlightened self-mockery, a neo-Kantian personal categorical imperative, and an existential leap of action to get you moving.

Everyday Systems Podcast #19: Personal Punch Cards

How to use index cards for todo lists at the three scales of the chain of command: daily, monthly, yearly.

Everyday Systems Podcast #18: Chain of Self-Command

Organize your self improvement efforts on three temporal scales: year=general, month=officer, day=footsoldier.

Everyday Systems Podcast #17: Personal Olympics

Make your goals fun, important, and attainable with Personal Olympics.

Everyday Systems Podcast #16: Monthly Resolution

A month is a much better granularity than the more typical yearly resolution we make on new years, because you can estimate better on that smaller scale, and recover and reset faster. And it's long enough (over 21 days!) for some habituation to occur, even with a slip up or two.

Everyday Systems Podcast #15: Season's Warnings

Limit your celebratory eating to the holidays themselves. Adjust your expectations so that your goal is mere maintenance. If you screw up, don't wait till new years to get back on the wagon.

Everyday Systems Podcast #14: Top 5 Arbitrary Numbers

One thing that every self help guru can agree on is that you have to have an arbitrary number in your system. It is a little weird that the most rational concepts we have available to us -- numbers -- are so irrationally inspiring. But it clearly is the case.

Everyday Systems Podcast #13: Strictness

Strictness builds habit faster. Dumb down what to be strict about with "fence around the law." Avoid punishment and reparations.

Everyday Systems Podcast #12: 21 days and Negative Tracking

Use the full habit traffic light for 21 days to build your habit, then switch to more efficient negative tracking.

Everyday Systems Podcast #11: Habit Tracking with the Habit Traffic Light

Need to keep track of something? Keep track of behavior, not results, with the Habit Traffic Light. Mark each calendar day with green for success,  red for failure, yellow for exempt (S-days). It's cheap and keeps you focused on what you can control.

Everyday Systems Podcast #10: Habit Friendly Behaviors

How to identify behaviors that are easily automated into unconscious habit.

Everyday Systems Podcast #9: Habit Management

Want results? Frame your goals in terms of behavior. Results goals are just wishful thinking. Automate conscious behaviors into unconscious habits.

Everyday Systems Podcast #8: Glass Ceiling

Smooth out dangerous and humiliating binge drinking into moderate and pleasurable moderate drinking with a 2 drink a day "glass ceiling."

Everyday Systems Podcast #7: Weekend Luddite

For every labor saving device there seem to be at least two time consuming devices to soak up all that freed time again. As T.S. Eliot put it, we are "distracted by distraction from distraction." Weekend Luddite is a system that addresses (at least in part) this problem of distraction management.

Everyday Systems Podcast #6: Urban Ranger

Reimagine yourself so that walking becomes the most important, the most exciting thing you could possibly be doing.

Everyday Systems Podcast #5: Shovelglove Time

14 minutes is one minute less than the smallest unit of schedulistically significant time. No calendar has a finer granularity than 15 minutes. No one ever has a meeting that starts at 9:05 or 9:14. You have no excuse not to do this. Time-wise, it doesn't even register.

Everyday Systems Podcast #4: Shovelglove Sledgehammer Workout Overview

Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your "shovelglove." Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, wood chopping and other motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays

Everyday Systems Podcast #3: No S Diet Rules

Last week I gave a high level overview of the no s diet to give you a sense of how something this simple could possibly work. This week I'm going to zoom in a little to a smaller scale and go over each of the rules in a bit of detail.

Everyday Systems Podcast #2: No S Diet Overview

Everydays Systems Overview