Everyday Systems Podcast

When "growth mindset" hits its limits, it's time for another approach.

A mock superpower for not looking at porn

Specific rules and a general approach for managing your relationship with technology -- battle hardened by over 20 years of practice. 

Game mechanics as life hacks (also some game recommendations).

6th annual review of the Everyday Systems and how they are doing for me personally

Bounce back from injuries and setbacks by recasting progress as a reward

How to stop permasnacking on news. Use techniques inspired by the No S Diet and read it like a meal.

Todo Lists Are Your Salvation / Todo Lists Are Your Damnation

A more nuanced approach to systematically moderating alcohol (and other substances)

When you don't like what you want

Urban Ranger, 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.

Cure all your ailments with dirt, pain and danger

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Practice being human with AI

Everyday Systems as Apps for Human Minds.

Four catchphrases for tidier habits

A lighthearted approach to imposter syndrome.

A little later and much shorter than last year.

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

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.  

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Specific techniques for making study a daily habit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.  

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

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

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.

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.

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