Dreamcatcher: Posts and podcasts that inspired me this week

Welcome to the Dreamcatcher, where I share the posts and podcasts that inspired me to action or deeper thought during the week.

Tubbs fire 10/9/17 – a sudden evacuation – Dads Dollars Debts

 It’s hard to fathom losing all your possessions in an instant. Dads Dollars Debts does an incredible job bringing you into his world, which is suddenly turned upside down by an early morning knock at the door. What follows is a harrowing tale of escaping a raging fire consuming entire neighborhoods. In that moment of panic, what do you do? We all think we’ll have a clear head about us. Experience tells us otherwise. There’s some great advice on what you should do to prepare for a sudden evacuation. I need to heed this advice myself and create a go bag (or box) of truly important things. And let’s be honest, there really aren’t many things I can’t replace. The follow-up to this post can be found here.

How I ate all week for just $13.84 by living on a food stamp budget – Doubling Dollars

 Funny enough I thought about trying this myself in the past week. A local newspaper columnist did this years ago for her family of four to see how difficult it would be. I’m not sure what made me think of that column, but it made me wonder what the experience would be like today. Then I saw this post show up in Rockstar Finance. I’ll have to talk to my wife about trying it out. It’s got a bit of Seneca’s Stoic “is this the condition that I feared?” to it. I never practice voluntary deprivation — and to be honest, there’s not a lot of deprivation going on with the meals in this post. My wife has said she thinks we spend too much on groceries. Here’s a chance to test that theory with a purpose!

Sabbath: Marilyn Paul on taking time to rest, recharge and recalibrate – Beyond The To Do List Podcast

“The quality of life is quite different off the screen,” says author Marilyn Paul. In “An Oasis In Time,” Marilyn outlines the benefits of truly taking time off from work, whether that’s professional or chores around the house. Her family has a weekly routine where they turn off screens for 24 hours, from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and live life in the present without distraction. If you’re anything like me, you spend an enormous amount of time in front of a screen. A typical day for me involves looking at a screen of one kind or another for a huge amount of the day. On Wednesday, I was awake 17 hours. I figure just 3 hours and 10 minutes was spent away from a screen, with the longest stretch being for an hour. Almost 14 hours looking at a phone, computer or iPad in one day. And that wasn’t all that unusual. That’s downright unhealthy! Marilyn offers these five tips for getting the most out of a screen sabbath:
• Protect the time – Plan it, put it in your calendar, and know who you’ll spend the time off-screen.
• Begin and end – Name your beginning and stick to it. Setting an end time is just as important. Have a ritual for the beginning and end, something that signals that you are shifting mindsets.
• Disconnect to connect – Disconnect from screens and from your “working” mind; write down projects you don’t want to think about during that time and put it away to come back to later. Connect with yourself, with someone nearby, and with what’s most important to you.
• Slow down to savor – As we slow down, our mind shifts to pay attention to what’s around us. Slow your walking pace, your talking pace, your eating, etc. Notice the present moment.
• Let go of achieving to rest, reflect and play – Don’t try to achieve things; just live your life.

Optimizing: Noah Kagan on testing, optimizing, and perspective – Beyond The To Do List

Noah Kagan has a great explanatory style for how and why he is able to optimize things. I love his logic when tackling problems, as well as the way he talks about these profound realizations he has as if they’re just simple observations. Noah and host Erik Fisher have a great rapport in this episode, and both pull back the curtain a bit on their own struggles with energy levels, commitment, and confidence in their projects. There are so many actionable nuggets in this interview. I’ve had BTTDL in my podcast feed for quite some time, but this is the first time I’ve listened to it in awhile. Based on these two episodes, I’ll have to load up on this one and binge a little!