Month: March 2022

With a short break, I wanted to take a look back at some trials of the past. A popular choice of mine were challenges surrounding diet. From eating a vegetarian diet to calorie counting, there are a few that belong to this loose category. Looking through the archives, I wanted to see which I still followed to this day, and explore why the others fell to the wayside.

Still Practiced, Kind of

There are only two trials that I still follow, and even those have an asterisk. The two trials are calorie counting and intermittent fasting. I’ll start with calorie counting as I have more to say on it.

After months of not practicing the habit, I decided to make the effort when I wanted to start losing weight recently. After only about a month of restricted calories, I lost nearly ten pounds. Throughout the month, I rarely felt that I was under eating or putting myself through a particular challenge.

Once I was around a weight I was happy with, I stopped counting daily and just kind of ate whatever. I was floating around that weight for a bit, but I think vacation mode has led to that number getting away from me. That’s something that I think is really important when calorie restricting and counting, having a return to normal. It can easily become an unhealthy habit if the number going down becomes the goal, not a particular target.

This comes to the second of the practices I’ve maintained, kind of, intermittent fasting. The way I look at fasting is that I simply don’t let the clock tell me when to eat. I eat when I’m hungry in the morning and then the same the next day. I don’t notice much difference between what I’m practicing now and the stricter time based fasting I did in the past.

All in all, I’ve had a much better time with following my stomach than the clock.

Discontinued, Kind of

Now for those that didn’t last. Some are on my mind more than others, and some I even practice without meaning to!

A trial that I think back on often was meal prep. Every month or so I think about picking it back up again, but then days go by and I never end up rebuilding the habit.

The next group of trials I’m going to just refer to as vice abstinence. In this case coffee, alcohol, and sugar. I don’t plan on quitting coffee again anytime soon. It’s an integral part of my day, and is a nice ritual to get the morning started. I have gotten much better at only drinking in the morning and stopping at two cups max, though the occasional three cup day does arise.

Sugar and alcohol on the other hand aren’t as intertwined into my day. I’m not reliant on either substance, so I’m not worried about my current use. Perhaps some sort of conscious consumption of cravings in the coming weeks would be good to check in on how I really feel about them.

Another trial related to abstinence was going vegetarian and giving up meat. I’ve definitely had recent days pass by that were vegetarian or vegan by accident. This was simply based on the meals I ended up making for the day. The typical meal that breaks this practice is dinner, as my breakfast and lunch are unintentionally vegan. Though, depending on your definition, the bit of dark chocolate I have for breakfast “may” contain milk, but I’ll leave the labels in your court.

Reflecting on these trials has me thinking a lot about diet again Perhaps I’ll need to lock something in for later this year. After all, I feel diet easily fits the theme of foundation.

While my original vision with this trial was to create far more automated processes, I think it’s served better as a reflection on what systems are working and which are not. Getting some automation in place is definitely a plus, but the higher level thinking is where I’m seeing benefits.

The Step Before Automating

The first road I went down was getting my email better managed. For a couple of weeks, I was deleting so much crap I wasn’t even opening, aI started to let it out of hand. While I eventually took the time to set up rules and a simple script to keep my inbox clear, the place I really started was by unsubscribing from a bunch of newsletters I hardly ever read. I even blocked some emails that I couldn’t unsunscribe from.

Nearly all of the rules I created were set up to just delete emails from senders I couldn’t really do so, like my banks and credit cards. I still wanted some emails from them, just not every reminder for automatic payments or statement notifications. I manage nearly all my finances through apps anyway, so the emails are just extra clicks to delete.

While I’ve only applied this to email throughout this trial, I think it’s important to not waste time setting up automations for tasks that are better of being eliminated.

Tying to the Theme Foundation

For this final post of this trial, I wanted to reflect on how this connects to the yearly theme of foundation. When getting this started, I didn’t exactly have foundation in mind, but I think it fits well.

For one, I set up the base of home automation with getting Home Assistant installed and running. Setting up some smart home tech has been a desire of mine for a long time.

Through this practice of looking for optimizations, I’ve made a better effort to create templates and systems for getting things done. For example, these posts have long been blank pages in Google Docs that slowly filled up as I wrote. Now, I’ve set up a template with a focus on outlining and building out the text from there. It even includes some space for thinking about the photo to use, something that tends to be a last minute scroll through my available pictures.

The DnD planning template is one I started expanding on, and have some big ideas for changes in the long run. Changes were even made to my most frequently used template, the weekly review. Adding a simple checklist for other actions I started with, like tidying up my desk and getting any loose notes written permanently into Notion, my notes app of choice.

Overall, I’ve really expanded on what I want to get out of Notion, to use it more as just a place to keep notes and some templates. I’ve been reading and watching a lot about this whole “second brain” idea, and even managed to catch a brief “live webinar” just this week. I found it fit really well with the overall improvement to systems that I was looking for in this trial.

Where Do I Go From Here?

A major takeaway from the last few weeks is that if something feels tedious, it’s probably prime for some method of improvement or removal. Regularly checking in on the tasks I do for candidates is something I hope to do for the rest of my life.

Home automation is also something I’m looking forward to expanding. With more lights, sensors, and programming I can create some interesting processes throughout the house, or at least my room. The technology isn’t limited to lights of course, but without messing around with my friend’s house, I don’t expect major changes until I find a place of my own.

With this trial at a close, I’ll actually be taking a brief break. For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be on a trip and to avoid practicing some weird habit while out with friends, I’ll instead be sharing a few non-trial posts for a couple weeks.

After a few Amazon orders, I was able to lay the foundation for a home automation setup by installing a hub. Otherwise, I made progress on my DnD template to reduce the time taken for set up and took a crack at some programming.

Home Assistant Up and Running

Let’s start with the concrete progress from the week.

I gained ground when it comes to home automation. I dug out an old Raspberry Pi  to use as an automation hub. The hub serves as a control center for automation systems. I’ve gone with Home Assistant, because it’s a local system and is extremely flexible. With that piece of techin place, I can slowly build up automation options over time. As of now, the place I’ve started with is lighting

The consensus for lighting favors the use of smart light switches, but since I’m renting, rewiring light switches isn’t something I’m prioritizing now. I kept my initial goal simple. to remotely switch a lamp on and off. Once that system was set up, I added some minor automation based on the sunset and even a bedtime alert if I’m up too late. Currently, the alert just flashes the lights at 11:00 PM if the lamp is still on, which is all the nudge I need to start getting ready for bed. As with all things in smart home tech, I also have a grand vision for an improved system in mind.

With my primary goal complete, I have a few more lighting based ideas for the short term. One is to put a light strip under my bed for a dim light at night for when the even the dim lamp is too much. In a totally different part of the house, there is a set of shelves that lead to the basement. Due to their positioning, they are often poorly lit. With just a light strip with a built-in motion sensor, it could perfectly light up the shelf, as well as be an improved lead to the basement.

The major barrier at this point is cost, as I don’t want to sink a whole bunch of money into these options all at once. A benefit of home automation is it can be built over time, and every addition can lead to exponential options for tying different tech together.

One of the takeaways I’ve had in the project this week is to have a long term plan, but to start specific. The long term planning is largely creating the foundation for future additions, much like the base of any structure. However, it can be easy to get carried away with the plan and not get anything done. Having specific goals in mind to get started can help get the ball rolling.

Something Software this Way Comes

The major focus this week was on getting Home Assistant up and running, but I was able to spend some time in other areas.

The only progress I’ve made on my improvements to DnD planning was to add some existing tools I use directly to my existing template. Goblinist was the biggest one, as this will allow me to quickly generate a few options for random encounters, even on the fly mid session without much hassle. This certainly does save me a few clicks, but I still see plenty of room for improvement. My vision is being able to click on a few buttons directly within the template and it spits out similar options as Goblinist, but also includes the actual monster info directly into Notion.

An area that saw a questionable level of progress was setting up automated payments in Venmo. I looked at some other payment platform options that offered built in scheduling, but I wanted to avoid having my roommate sign up for new things. I was able to utilize an existing project to get the code almost working, however after 2 hours I was still dealing with some errors. I’m hoping after jumping through some verification hoops with Venmo, I might get this wrapped up. While I am spending far more time than I ever will clicking the few buttons needed to send a payment, I find three major benefits to automating this.

First, I don’t need to take the time to think about sending what I owe each month, something I’ve forgotten several days into the month at times. Second, I can always adjust the process for anyone or anything willing to accept Venmo for payments. Finally, it’s been a great learning experience. While I’m largely borrowing from existing code, working through the changes I need to get my process to work is forcing me to learn a lot about the technical structure of the service.

With just about a week left in this focus on automation, I’m going to focus on systems to speed up the writing of these posts. I’ll be going on a trip soon and want to have posts up and ready without much interruption.

This past week has set me up with some easy solutions for taking care of my email and a calendar entry for cash back categories. When I began to move on to more technological solutions, things got complicated fast.

Progress and Obstacles

There isn’t much to say about what I’ve gotten through so far. I’ve taken care of the easy things so far, email and a simple calendar. 

Finally tackling the mound of email I let build up over a few weeks is always a relief. Using that pile to create rules to delete or archive emails automatically will make the process near instant in the future. There are still items I want to read, review, and reply to, but most emails that I get are things I don’t need or can find on demand otherwise.

The simplest, but not necessarily easiest, process to pursue for email was to unsubscribe from those I no longer need. There are a number of newsletters I’ve signed up for over time, only a few of which I regularly check. This I believe is the biggest takeaway so far, elimination can beat automation.

After accomplishing the simple items on my list, I wanted to shift to some home automation options. In looking for a smart plug to remotely toggle a lamp in my room, The options quickly became a lot to learn. I found myself perusing reviews and subreddits trying to find something simple but also isn’t total junk. When I thought I came to an answer, I found myself down a discussion that saw security flaws in the plugs. While there are options to secure them, it sounded like just as much work to begin a more complex process. For the time being, I don’t expect much for technological automation over the next few weeks.

Next Steps

I plan to continue researching options for getting that lamp automated, but it’s taking a backseat to some other options for now.

One area where many things are already automated are my finances. I have most everything on autopay, direct deposit, etc. However, there are a few areas I still pay manually, and I am looking for an option to automate a monthly payment. I think I have a solution in the service Zelle, already offered through my back, but I just haven’t taken the time to confirm it will do what I want. This will definitely be a focus for next week.

When I prepare games for DnD, I use a template from SlyFlourish for the lazy dungeon master system. This template in itself saves me a lot of time being able to plan just a few key elements built from a simple template. However, I’ve been thinking about introducing additional methods for handling random encounters and rewards, some of the less interesting parts of planning in my opinion. There are some manual random tables I use to minimize the thought process, but I feel there are still opportunities to smooth the overall planning process out.

A place I’d like to explore more is using code to speed the process up. Recently, I got my first glance at Google Scripts, JavaScript platform that allows the development and execution of scripts. So far, all I’ve used the platform for is automatically archiving emails, something not possible through filters. What I like about focusing on programs over hardware, is that it’s a lot easier for me to understand what lines of code will do as compared to the wide variety of automation products out there.

I’m happy to continue eliminating or iterating on the numerous tasks in my day. Finding systems, technology, and programs to minimize mental effort can forever be a benefit.