October 2017 – Trying Out Before Buying In

Stacks on Stacks (Of Books)

Before I start, I want to mention my new obsession with the website Goodreads. This past week I’ve been adding books from the shelves I have at home, ebooks on file, as I hear them referred in content I’m consuming, or just pop into my head as something I want to read. For those of you unfamiliar with the website, Goodreads is a database of nearly every published book ever. You can create reading lists, organize books into shelves, and rate them for other users to see. Creating and organizing my shelves has probably taken up at least an hour of my time this past week. I am obsessed with tagging each book properly. Come check out my list! As mentioned, my currently reading consist of the three books I mentioned last week. So far, I’ve started both Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and The Haunting of Hill House.

Ben Franklin’s story is a pretty amazing one. As a middle-class tradesman, he is now highly regarded as a philosopher, scientist, businessman, and politician. How did a printer from Boston become the face of the $100 bill? I believe a huge part of Franklin’s success comes from the use of a few rules or models for living. By letting minor actions be decided thru certain rules, he could focus on what mattered, being successful. In his young adulthood, he created four rules of living:

It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.
To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action — the most amiable excellence in a rational being.
To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.
I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever.

To be put simply: Be Frugal, Be Honest, Be Committed, Be Polite.

He also lived by a code which he called the Thirteen Virtues. Someone had made a website listing out each paired with Franklin’s definition for it, as found in this very biography. http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/

Another aspect that I think truly made Franklin excel, was his association with other like-minded people. This is not to say he was surrounded by “Yes men” or each of his friends held the same beliefs, but his colleagues, the Junto, were all philosophical minds that continually questioned conventions and assumptions. These men not only helped Franklin thrive in philosophy and science but also in business ventures as well. I’ve heard this type of thinking time and time again from the author, entrepreneur, and Ben Franklin fan Tim Ferriss. He has many times said in both his writing and speaking, “you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.” His advice is to build your group with the people you want to see yourself become, which can be tough advice to practice, but important if you have high goals.

The chapters ahead of me focus on Franklin’s life as a politician, where his fame truly lies, but first I plan on wrapping up Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t often get into fiction stories that much in book form, but I’m challenging myself in this trial to actually get thru an entire book. I’ve found myself starting yet never finishing a number of books in the past.

One piece of advice that I think has helped me to not only enjoy the story more but to actually read faster as well is to not focus on the words on the page, but visualize the story as it’s happening. My brother told me this one day a while back when I was living with him. We got on the subject of reading and I shared with him my distaste for fiction. “I get caught up on the same line over and over again, so I never get into the story,” I said. He explained to me how he didn’t worry about the words as much and just created the scene as he read over the lines. This has really helped me cruise thru the book so far.

In the past week, I’ve read more than I have in probably the past three months combined, and if you’ve looked at my Goodreads want to read shelf, I would never put a dent into that thing otherwise. Reading has long been something I put off, and even have in the past week. The other day I was up until three in the morning making sure I got my pages in. Another day, I got about twenty pages in and could barely read anymore so I made up the pages the next day. Even with this challenge to myself, I still find myself putting it off for less important tasks and distractions. To tie the last few sentences up nicely, in order to do the things we really want to do, we need to make time for them by not doing the things we only kind of want to do.

Thawed Out

Four long weeks of cold showers, exactly what I needed to remind myself the importance of committing, even when the commitment sucks. The whole experience made me think, “if I can take this freezing shower for no reason other than I said I would, why should I go back on anything else?” There were definitely days where I thought, I could totally just take a warm shower today and write about the excuses in my head for doing so. “It was raining and very cold out. I was sick. One day won’t ruin what I built up over the month.” Still, I just made myself get in and do it. By the time I got out, I looked back on the excuses I was looking to make and knew they are the exact reason I needed to start this trial in the first place. Now that the trial has come to a close, it’s time to reflect on what I can take away from these past few weeks.

I’ve been asked a lot if I will continue cold showers once the trial has ended. For the next few weeks, I’ll answer with a resounding no. However, I do foresee myself taking the occasional one when I know I need to get some things done afterward and don’t want to waste a few minutes standing still, or if I need to quickly shower before leaving home. I can also see myself turning the water to cold is when I need a jolt of “Hey dumbass stop making excuses and whining.”

A similar but slightly different approach I may stick with is to take contrasting showers. While trying to pull up some real research on benefits of cold showers, beyond the sensationalist articles with names like “Top Five Reasons You Need to Take Cold Showers Now,” I found a report by the Australian Coaches Council that briefly mentioned benefits of temperature contrast for muscle recovery. Here’s the whole document. Page 15 discusses hydrotherapy thru the use of contrasting temperatures. Right now, I’m looking to get back into running and biking, and the claims made for muscle recovery can be quite helpful. During the trial, I looked for benefits of cold showers specifically and found a few pieces on the topic, but I’m sure I could have just as easily found articles highlighting the benefits of hot showers. In reality, there are probably benefits to both, so why not just switch it up from time to time?

One problem I catch myself in when taking hot or warm showers is loitering in the shower and not getting onto the things I need to accomplish that day. The biggest benefit I’ve seen in my weeks of cold showers is a huge drop in the time spent each day getting clean. I gave an estimate of six minutes based on how I would listen to about one and a half to two songs per shower previously. During my cold shower trial, I had was in and out in an average of 2:27, 3:16 for time including drying off, cutting time well in half. Having had this experience, I wonder to what extent I will be conscious of the time I spend showering going forward.

Along with time spent, someday this could translate into dollars saved. RIght now, the apartment I’m in I don’t pay for most utilities, but I decided to look at the factors. I found this calculator after a quick Google search. I entered in the local utility costs I was able to find on the city of Dubuque website, an average time of 6 minutes and a warm shower (defined as 90° F) for a result of $0.19 per day which comes out to over $67 per year. For cold showers (65° F) at the same time, the cost is cut well in half, $0.09 per day or $32.87 per year, but as I mentioned above, a cold shower tends to push you to go a bit quicker. At 3 minutes that total drops down to $0.05 per day, $16.43 per year. At 2 minutes a mere $0.03 a day which comes to $10.96 every year. Is that warm shower taken every day worth a couple dimes each time? Maybe. That’s up to you, but a definite benefit to keep in mind.

Now that I’m done freezing myself by choice, what will I be doing next? The mail list subscribers might have noticed I was spending quite some time at the library this past weekend. While there I took out a handful of books. In order to actually read the near 1000 pages, for the next four weeks, I will be reading at least 35 pages of a book per day. My reading list has gotten a bit out of hand with more books added every week from podcasts, blogs and even within books themselves. Most recently, I was turned onto the biographies by author Walter Isaacson after he appeared on the Tim Ferriss Show, a highlight mentioned in my newsletter. During my trip to the library, I grabbed his book on the life of Benjamin Franklin along with a few others. With October coming to a close, I realized I haven’t watched any horror movies this month, so I decided I should dig into a horror novel instead, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson in this case. Lastly, developing new skills is something I love doing and one that I’ve been long interested in has been woodworking and carpentry. After several minutes of walking up and down the library stacks I found Nick Offerman’s Good Clean Fun, which I hope to be an enjoyable, yet educational, read. I hope to finish each of these over the course of the next four weeks. If you want to join along, I challenge you to try reading differently than usual. For example, I never read fiction, I figure I’ll wait for the movie to come out or watch a YouTube video summarizing the events and themes in a few minutes (I personally enjoy Sparky Sweets from Thug Notes). So if you usually read fiction, pick up a biography or nonfiction book on a subject you know only a little about, or, if you’re like me, dive into a story crafted from the mind of a great author. October is a great time for horror.

The next few posts may be a bit different than what I’ve done in the past, but I hope you still tune in and join me thru each book!

Sanity is Relative

Every time I am trying something new, I have a few conversations with friends or family in which they make it seem that I am doing the wildest thing in the world.

This past weekend, I participated in a cross country race hosted by my alma mater. It is a damned tough course, lots of hills thru the same loops for five miles, and the weather this year did not make things any easier. It was cold and rainy, “great cross country weather,” as my old coach put it. I joke with myself every year that there must be something wrong with me that I come back and take part in these events in track and cross when I am definitely not in the shape to do it. “Who cares about a running around in circles, I thought this was about showers?” You might be asking, and here’s the point. When I saw some friends for the first time in a while, questions were posed about the showers and how they couldn’t imagine doing it, but each one of them had run on the course described above without question. Some of them were back out of choice to run that very day. Having once been a cross country and distance track runner, I feel like I will always be ready to do something regardless of how crazy it sounds to others. Perhaps that is the very essence that this blog came from.

Looking back on instances of my past self being opposed to certain experiences have led me to be shocked by how boring I once was. Earlier today, I recalled two specific moments of despising the idea of a cold shower and never imagining taking one out of choice. The first was a time when the water heater broke at my mom’s house. The second experience was at summer camp in Boy Scouts and we were there for a week or two, depending on how long you were staying. Being out in the woods, there were select showers that had minor warmth, and apparently, it was worth the hike to get there. In both cases, I remember bracing myself for cold water like it was the toughest thing I had to do, which looking back it very well may have been.

When I first decided cold showers would be my next trial, I was hoping it would rebuild toughness I felt I had lost. Ultimately, I believe that is a success. I’ve done every shower without complaint. Observing that they are less enjoyable sure, but whining or complaining, no. After a few weeks of this, it will be weird going back after this next week. All in all, if I was stuck doing this for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t think twice. Speaking of being done with this next week, I need the idea for my next trial. Leave a comment below and I’ll add it to my list to pick from next week!

For Colder or Worse

This week I noticed a trend with the blog that has started. The first week I feel one way about something then the next week my feelings become the complete opposite. Last week I raved at how great the cold showers felt, it helped that Dubuque was abnormally warm those days. Now that the weather is cooling off, I get out of the shower and am freezing cold. A similar thing happened during the last trial with the diet. I struggled the first week. In the second post, I felt I was enjoying it much more. We’ll have to see if this trend continues.

A big thing I wanted to focus on moving forward was objective measures of benefits, or hindrance, in trying something new. Last week, I mentioned using the time I spend in the shower as that measure. I’ve been timing myself the past week and I am showering for an average time of 2:30, 3:18 including drying off. It’s tough to determine how knowing that I am being timed is impacting my time in, but with the cold, I was already trying to get in and out as quickly as possible.Regardless, I am cutting the time I am spending by more than half, based on a rough guess of 6 minutes prior.

Something I was hoping to see based on some reading with cold showers is it’s helpfulness with muscle soreness as I’ve started to workout again, but damn does my body still hurt. Maybe the years of neglect aren’t really helped by just a few days of cold showering, but hey maybe it will help someday? I’ve tried to throw in a morning stretch routine to help with this, so fingers crossed that will do the trick. All in all, still not seeing the health benefits there.

One place that I think I am seeing some of the positive effects of cold showers is weight loss. I do want to state for the record here, I am not a medical expert or even close to someone who really understands how the human body works. In other words, I really have no idea what I’m talking about, seek professional guidance before seeking certain results, whether following a trial I’m running or something on your own. I’ve read that colder showers can help lose weight. I didn’t read anything with deep scientific evidence, but was an interesting insight. I did find myself under 160 lbs for the first time in years though. Though, without a good control measure, it’s tough to say what impact the showers may have had if any at all.

Overall, I don’t hate that I’m taking cold showers, but damn it got a lot harder this past week. I think the benefits thus far are outweighing the pain caused by doing so, but then again the winter hasn’t rolled in yet. We’ll have to see how this week goes, will it get better? Will it get worse? Find out next time on Dragon Ba..wait I think I’m in the wrong place.