2021 Q3-Q4 Review & Planning

At the heart of modern statistical physics is the idea of renormalization. Zoom out from the microscopic scale to the coarse, macroscopic scale, and you will have to swap out one description of the system for another¹. Water molecules bouncing around like Newton's billiards become the smooth waves of Navier Stokes—the random, jagged tracks of gas particles average out to stable pressures on pistons.

So for distance, so for duration. The unpredictable trajectories of Lorenzian chaos smooths out to predictable probability flows on long timescales. A random walker's path may never be predicted, but the average distance covered from the starting point scales, on average, with the unwavering square root of the time passed.

Is the fundamental idea behind personal effectiveness really any different? Day-to-day actions rack up to weeks well spent or squandered. Weeks beget months then quarters, years, decades. The fundamental challenge is to organize one's actions in a way consistent across all these timescales so that both the long-term effect and immediate experience tend towards pleasure and presence of mind.

The primary weapon in the effectiveness arsenal is the review & planning—whether a quick daily recap, an in-depth weekly review à la GTD, the every-four-weeks-or-so sprint retrospective and planning (if you're working in a team), a quarterly check-in, or yearly megasession. This is the key intersection point between different timescales, the moment in which you mediate between the lazy daily self and the ambitious centaguanarian self.

So with this lengthy introduction, let me start the third quarter review and fourth quarter planning of 2021.

First, a recap of my 2021 Goals and Halfway Report.

📕 Reading

1 book a week. Read through the books of Twain, Orwell, and the Stoics. Read ≥5 non-English books.

I ended up upping my goal to read 100 books this year and am well on-track—in fact, five books ahead of schedule (at 79).¹ My taste for the Stoics was mostly saturated by March (with only a few discourses by Epictetus outstanding). Meantime, I devoured every book by Orwell I had not yet read (not counting all of his essays, which I hadn't originally intended to include here).²

I am now working through the rest of Twain though I may have been a little overambitious here—this guy is a prodigious freak. In addition to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Twain wrote eight novels, a dozen short story collections, a half dozen essay bundles, 11 non-fiction books, an autobiography, and yet more. My lesson for next year is to do a bit more research before so boldly laying claim to another's bibliography.

Outside of English, I read Max Havelaar in Dutch, the second installment of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and the Three-Body Problem³ in French along with La Peste by Camus. To close off the year I think I will have Pinocchio in the Italian.

You may have noticed that I like to binge authors. In addition to the above planned binges, I got through most of Robert Greene's books⁴, David Sedaris's essay collections, and just today finished my last of the Sherlock Holmes series. 100% retention is not quite my goal otherwise I would likely space these reading out more. Instead, I'm looking to gorge myself on a particular author's voice or world view until I get nauseous. It feels more intimate that way (even though physically it more closely resembles the one-night stand). Also, author-specific binges are a great way to index your memories. 16-17? You mean Dostoevsky. 19? Oh yes, the year of Vonnegut. David Foster Wallace? Oh you mean second half of 21. And so on.

✍️ Writing

Publish 1 article a week. 1 newsletter every two weeks. Do a bit of promotion.

This is where I have most fallen behind. In order to reach 52 articles for the year, I now have to average just about two a week. That said, I did maintain my writing practice in other ways I haven't ended up counting to my total—notably, assignments for my last classes at uni and my masters project.

I also dropped the newsletter during much of the year and only recently started it up again. So here, let me reavow my intention: I will publish 52 articles this year, keep a consistent biweekly newsletter, and promote on LinkedIn on the offweek between newsletter postings.

📊 Organization

Actually implement GTD and go all the way. Do a weekly review & planning, quarterly reviews, and yearly reviews.

This is going well. I have a six-week streak of successful weekly reviews (my best yet), and I feel that I am past the implementation hump.

One major goal for the rest of this year is to go back to markdown-based planning. I began using Obsidian for both note-taking and planning, then decided that Notion was a better option for the planning (since it would be easier to collaborate with the rest of my team).

The problem is that Notion is too slow for me—not just in terms of indexing but in having to manually click things. So I'm going to head back to my Obsidian vault and try to integrate Logseq for task management.

🗣 Language-learning

Reach B2 with Italian. Reach B1 with German.

I started the year off strong, but over the past two and a half months have neglected my spaced-repetition practice and, in turn, my B1-ish Italian and fledgling German. It is just a little too easy to break good habits when you change your life drastically (e.g., move to the US).

So my goal for the rest of the year is to simply get back on track. That means no more overdue cards in my General, Italian, and French decks. Starting this week, I'm aiming to add 100 words of German a week, which will total a very reasonable 1,400 over the remaining 14 weeks. With my Germanic basis in Dutch, a B1 level of understanding should be well within reach.

🫀 Exercise & Injury

At my last update, I was finally incorporating more cardio. That worked for a while but I have found that over the last two weeks it has been a bit of a dip. I think the problem has been that I need to set clearer targets. In that spirit, I am aiming to average 5,000 steps, at least three seven-minute work outs, and a 30-minute mobility workout every day over the rest of the year.

In terms of injury, the second half of the year has been treating me well. I found a second-hand Aeron desk chair—the gold standard of ergonometry, and it has been great so far. Combined with more good old fashioned movement & breaks, I am having the time of my life.

💼 Business

This requires a more in-depth, separate treatment, and I trust you will remain patient until that time.

Conclusion

All in all, I have been making good progress on my goals. I am now ahead in some areas, behind in others, but I trust that, by the end year, I will have completed most of my goals—at least the ones I still find relevant. I am already looking forward to next batch.

Summary

• 📕 Reading: At least 21 more books; The Discourses by Epictetus, 10 more books by Twain, 2 by Robert Green, and Pinocchio.
• ✍️ Writing: 29 more articles. Finish up at least two of the series I have started.
• 📊 Organization: Migrate from Notion to Logseq.
• 🗣 Language-learning: 1,500 words in German.
• 🫀 Exercise & Injury: Average three 7-minute workouts, 5,000 steps, 30 minutes of mobility a day.

Footnotes

"So much depends on reputation," Greene's fifth law begins, that you should "guard it with your life."

As usual, this law contains a weighty nugget of truth—perhaps something more like a deep well of truth, a California-gold-rush-inspiring vein's worth of truth.

That's because even the most virtuous person in the world will not go far without reputation. It takes little effort for an adversary to seed crippling rumors, and the higher you go, the more unrelenting the attacks. Were Socrates to have preemptively challenged the claims of his being a rabble-rouser, he might have lived a little longer, roused a little more rabble.¹

On the other side, many an unworthy figure have succeeded in disseminating the immaculate image of benevolence. Think of Mother Theresa, a figure revered by both devout insiders and heretical outsiders, who kept her dependents in squalid conditions and denied them essential medical care [1]. This is the woman who said, "[t]here is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering" [2]. We lose much in revering false saints.

Often, the less-than-perfectly moral person finds redemption in precisely those qualities which leave room to be desired. We love ourselves a bad boy: a Jobs, Napoleon, Caesar, Cleopatra, Genghis, you probably have your favorite. One's sins become the mark for which we most celebrate these psychopaths.

So in short, yes, Mr. Greene, reputation matters.

Where Greene goes wrong is that reputation is not a sustainable center of attention. You will never have full control over your reputation, and you should not hope to. Instead, turn your attention to laying the foundation from which reputation springs—good old-fashioned character.

The fifth law of cooperation is "so much depends on character: let it speak for itself." Focus on cultivating virtue, and the reputation will, with only minor corrections, follow suit.

Observance of the Law

Marcius Porcia Cato (2 Areas/3 Notes/4 Humanities/15 History/L,O History/People/Historical/Cato the Younger) grew up during a particularly turbulent period of Roman history—even by the standards of his contemporaries.

He was born in 95 BCE, six years after the Roman Republic had narrowly won the Cimbrian War, the first serious threat to Rome in over a century. Several decades earlier, millions of Germanic and Celtic people (the "Cimbri") began to descend southward through Europe on a collision course straight for the Italian heartland. Having crushed the Romans in their first encounters, these alien hominids posed a very real risk of Roman extinction.

Only the august leadership of Gaius Marius would delay the Republic its day of reckoning. And, as is the case whenever most needed, victory came at a price: a redefinition of what it meant to be Roman. Before the war, Rome had still been Rome the city. The Italian peninsula was a pastiche of different cultures and peoples unified only in military capacity. The war started Italy's path to homogeneity.

During the fighting, Marius extended Roman citizenship to Italian allied soldiers. This was perhaps necessary on the battlefield, but it inadvertently set up the next crisis. When Rome finally restored peace, her allies petitioned the senate to extend this privilege to all Italian citizens. Rome, in her paranoid fear of vulnerability, was not going to give in without a fight. War was brewing.

It is during this interbellum that Cato was born. "Even from his infancy," Plutarch writes[3], Cato was different from other kids.

"[I]n his speech, his countenance, and all his childish pastimes, he discovered an inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything. He was resolute in his purposes, much beyond the strength of his age, to go through with whatever he undertook. He was rough and ungentle toward those that flattered him, and still more unyielding to those who threatened him."

Plutarch relates an illustrative anecdote from Cato as toddler. A delegate from the allies came to Cato's home to plead his case before Cato's uncle, a prominent statesman and popular advocate for the allies. After finishing his presentation, the delegate surveyed the response to find the room in uniform approval save one detractor—little Cato silent in apparent denial. Teasing the young rascal (what we might today call child abuse), the delegate held Cato out of the window by the feet and shook him a few times. To no avail. Cato remained ever silent. The delegate was the first to realize that brute force would never compel Cato to change his mind.

Cato's intransigence in justice and invulnerability to force would characterize him all his life. In adulthood, he was to become the premier advocate against the creeping authoritarianism and corruption of his day, a last bastion against the tyrannical Sullas, Pompeys, and Caesars who conducted the final act of the Roman Republic.

Soon after the above anecdote took place, Cato's uncle was assassinated. This was the Ferdinand moment that promptly triggered the "Social War" (so named after the Latin for allies, socii). War lasted from 91 to 87 BCE and ended with the allies (at least the cooperative ones) getting exactly what they had longed for: Roman citizenship. Unfortunately for them, the price to entry was the demise of their own identities. Political Romanization meant cultural Romanization; broadening the citizenry enabled Rome to finally realize her synechdochial aspirations for Italy and eventually the entire Mediterranean.

The Social War would do for Lucius Sulla what the Cimbrian war had done for Gaius Marius—Rome now possessed two equally powerful, popular, and capable generals. In full Thucydidean fashion, a clash was inevitable. The next six years (until 81 BCE) would see Marius and Sulla jockey back and forth—the one claiming control and exiling the other only for the tables to turn the other way, then back again.

Sulla won the resulting civil war at the cost of twice having marched his army on Rome (which would give Caesar his precedent) and of installing himself as dictator. And, in the immediate aftermath, Sulla launched a reign of terror to inspire Robespierre, massacring close to 10,000 noblemen and women—many of them former allies of Marius. The Roman Republic began its death spiral.

By this time, Cato, barely a teenager, was a favorite of Sulla. Unlike others (who were liable to receive a death sentence), Cato had almost free license to criticize and condemn Sulla in public (it helped that they were distant cousins). Plutarch reports that Cato, at the height of killings, asked his tutor to "[g]ive me a sword, that I might free my country from slavery." The tutor, knowing Cato's resoluteness, made sure to not leave Cato unattended anymore in the capital. Fortunately for Sulla, the dictator gave up absolute power before Cato could realize his tyrranicidal intentions. Sulla retired to country life and died soon after. Evidiently, Roman culture's traditional shaming of autocrats remained too strong for Sulla to resist.

As a man with senatorial ambitions, Cato followed the cursus honorum ("course of honors" or "ladder of honors")—the standard hierarchical sequence of public offices taken by all aspiring politicians.

He began his political life with the prerequisite decade of military service as the commander of a legion stationed in Macedon. Extremely popular with his legionaries, Cato received well beyond the normal allotment of legionary love. According to Plutarch, this stemmed from his unwavering consistency of character:

Whatever he commanded to be done, he himself took part in the performing; in his apparel, his diet, and mode of travelling, he was more like a common soldier than an officer; but in character, high purpose, and wisdom, he far exceeded all that had the names and titles of commanders, and he made himself, without knowing it, the object of general affection.

As recurs often throughout Cato's life, it was precisely his disregard for popular opinion that made him so popular. There was no pretense, no posturing. Cato was a figure who tried his very best—and usually succeeded—in living in accordance with what he thought to be just.

Cato returned to Rome in 65 BCE to take the next step on the ladder. He started in the senate as an entry-level quaestor (treasurer). As with every other office, Cato is remembered for being a particularly scrupulous quaestor. He began by prosecuting former quaestors who had embezzled funds and Sullan minions who had escaped justice.

The same consistency that made Cato so popular with the common people made Cato unpopular with many of his fellow senators. As Plutarch puts it, "[n]o virtue, by the fame and credit which it gives, creates more envy than justice, because both power and credit follow it chiefly among the common folk". There is nothing the corrupt hate quite so much as the incorruptible. For the rampant corruption of the senate and absolute incorruptibility of Cato, he soon gained some powerful adversaries.

In 63 BCE, Cato became a tribune of the plebs—the foremost representative of the common people. He faced his first major crisis in the Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow Cicero's consulship. After Caesar advocated to treat those involved with mercy (that is to say, a fair trial), Cato succeeded in convincing the senate to vote for direct execution—he believed no other measure would successfully deter future anti-republican plots.

Unfortunately for Cato, capital punishment was not enough to deter the autocratically ambitious. The very same year of the Catiline conspiracy witnessed the less covert conspiracy of the first triumvirate. The three most powerful men in Rome—Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus—joined in an informal alliance to undercut the Senate and empower themselves.

Cato's next years would be years of resistance. Both Pompey and Caesar, after genociding vast swathes of the East and West respectively, returned to Rome in the hope of both organizing a Triumph (an extravagant military parade and procession—the dream of every Roman general) and obtaining a consulship. Through debate and fillibuster, Cato forced the generals to choose between the two. Cato meant to keep private armies and public office separate as long as possible.

Caesar chose for consulship (Pompey, two years earlier, had chosen the Triumph) and tried to pass some agrarian reforms, which included redistributing highly arable land to Pompey's veterans. Cato was so adamant in bashing this measure publicly that Caesar had Cato arrested. The act backfired in that twist of nonviolent resistance so familiar to today's activists: Caesar's unrequited forcefulness made him seem the bad guy. Cato won a tiny victory of public opinion in an unwinnable war.

Occasionally, Cato's strict adherence to justice backfired. When he received an official commission to annex Cyprus, Cato had to accept however reluctantly—it was his legal duty even if the obvious extralegal intention was to get him out of the way and even if the republic needed Cato more than Cyprus did.

So too it is possible to argue that Cato's intransigence was the final spark that started the Republic's final civil war. In 54 BCE, two years after the triumvirate had disbanded, Cato succeeded in passing a resolution that ended Caesar's proconsular command. Caesar tried to negotiate and was willing to concede much if only to preserve the legal immunity. Despite Pompey approving the concession, Cato would not—could not—back down. Should it surprise anyone that Caesar chose civil war over public trial and certain exile?

As we all know, Caesar won the public war on Rome. But he never won his private war on Cato. In 46 BCE, Caesar finally hunted Cato down to the Tunisian town of Utica. Cato knew that Caesar would likely pardon him if he capitulated. He also knew that he would never be able to live with himself if he were to capitulate. So he took his own sword and tore open his stomach, the eternal master of his own fate. Only Cato was unsuccessful at first. His family intervened and summoned a doctor who stuffed the trailing intestines back where they belonged and sutured the wound. But no mere mortal could long resist Cato once he had made up his mind. When he recovered enough energy, he thrust the doctor away and ripped open the wound.

As he entered the world with unparalleled force of will, so he left.

Interpretation

Cato was steeped in Stoicism, a hellenistic school of thought founded in the third century BCE by Zeno of Citium.

Along with Aristotelian ethics, Stoicism is one of the founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics regard virtue as supremely important; the only path to the highest forms of happiness is the practice of wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

For the most part, Cato was the consummate stoic—his life reads almost like the official how-to guide to stoicism. He walked barefoot to the senate all his life, was always the first to arrive, and was painstaking with every responsibility he had. He sought justice for crimes that had been committed a decade earlier, never accepted a bribe, and constantly railed against the corruption of his age.

The stoics taught that actions, not words, are the true test of character, and character, not reputation, is the true test of personhood. By all accounts, even those of his foes, Cato appears to have passed. His character was a sledgehammer, often strong enough to counter generals and their armies, often the very last barrier between Republic and Empire.²

There was the occasional peccadillo—a tendency to overindulge in wine, for one (granted: all of Rome would be alcoholic by our standards). And he was maybe a tad too stubborn. Never compromising when he thought justice at a stake, Cato made a few errors in his cost-benefit calculations. Stripping Caesar of proconsular rights may be the "right thing" to do when you see his time has elapsed, but it becomes less defensible when you look ahead and see the alternative is empire. And killing traitors without trial seems to us hardly justifiable.

Still, Cato would be hardly human without some faults, and he would be hardly Cato without being the first to admit so. But all in all, his character has continued to inspire for millennia.³ That's because Cato represents something almost unheard of today: a politician with integrity—a public figure who cares less about public perception than private goodness.

Our actions, for the most part, are not the consequences of our reputations but of our character. Do we abandon our friends because we prefer not to be associated with them or because we are too cowardly and uncommitted to justice to stand up against the mob? Do we spend hours binging Instagram because we want to remain in touch with our friends or because we've let our temperance muscles atrophy. Do we agree with the popular opinion because we are afraid of what people will think of us or because we refuse to exercise wisdom?

So much depends on character. Almost everything.

The best way to keep a good reputation is to get to the point that you no longer have to worry about it. Character sustains reputation and speaks for itself.

Footnotes

Why are there no pan-European news agencies?

Sure, there are English-language newspapers and magazines that feature a section on "Europe": the Economist, the BBC, the Guardian—but these are British news agencies before anything else. On the other side of the channel, national newspapers like France's Le Monde, Germany's der Spiegel, and Italy's ANSA also report on European affairs but always through regionally fogged-up glasses.

Europe needs high-quality news that is European first and national second. That is because news is the substance of public discourse, and a healthy public discourse is prerequisite to a stronger Europe.

That's important because the world needs a strong Europe to set an example in the fight against climate change, to counter an aggressive Russia in its East, and to buttress against the Chinese Communist Party in the event that America isolationism continues to resurge.

So we need European news.

It's now, for the first time since Napoleon, that a European news agency has become possible. This is for two reasons:

1. Language. An entire generation of Europeans is entering adulthood with a common tongue. The EU speaks English much more fluently than it used to (compare any set of grandparents and grandchildren).
2. Changing definitions of "European". The open borders of cyberspace have changed the feeling of being European—many of this latest generation feel more solidarity with contemporaries across the border than compatriots across church aisles.

For these reasons, European news has an able and eager audience.

In the last few years, we've seen the first entrants try to meet this latent demand. "Are We Europe?" is a quarterly magazine that offers "borderless journalism from the next generation of storytellers." "Into Europe" is a YouTube channel that publishes video essays on European news and topics. The most successful example is probably that of "TLDR News EU" at a quarter of a million subscribers.

Still, something's missing. "Are We Europe?" is more a long-form humanities pastiche than concise source of European news. Unfortunately, most of us just don't have the attention spans. That's something "TLDR News" understands much better (it's in the name). But both "TLDR News" and "Into Europe", though they have wonderful content, produce only videos. Today's consumer expects wider ranging media such as interviews, articles, and email newsletters à la Axios.

That's where Romulus comes in. Romulus's mission is to provide Europe its much-needed news content. It's starting with regular YouTube videos, which it supplements with interviews and guest-written articles. And there's an ongoing newsletter giving regular updates on what's happening across Europe.

Romulus is still early-stage, so it's too early to say whether they will really pull off creating a novel news agency. But I think they can do it for three reasons:

1. Team. Founders Elmer Hoogland and Renier de Bruin have had lots of practice. While at Room For Discussion (RfD), the University of Amsterdam's interview platform, the two interviewed the likes of Pete Hoekstra, former US ambassador to the Netherlands, Feike Sijbesma, CEO of chemical corporation Royal DSM, Harold Goddijn, CEO of TomTom, and, Jordan Peterson, yes the JP. They're well-connected and have the know-how.
2. Idea. Elmer and Renier understand that a news company today can't look like the New York Times Magazine. It has to be more like Axios—sleek, multimedia, extremely to the point (whence this liberal usage of bullets and lists), and data-driven. With their technical backgrounds, the founders know that news companies today have to be technology companies. And they are flexible enough to act accordingly.
3. Execution. Not paralyzed by the typical European perfectionism, Romulus's team knows that what matters most is the amount of content. Moreover, their extensive networks mean that Elmer and Renier can outsource a lot of writing to third parties. With interviews, they can quickly churn much more content than hand-crafted videos. And by sheer dint of will-power, they will transcend the limits of the typical Dutch work-life balance to sacrifice short-term well-being for long-term world domination¹.

For those reasons, I think Romulus deserves a chance—and by chance, I mean your support. You can give them a newsletter sign-up or subscribe. Best of al it's for a good cause—you get informed and Europe gets your participation.

Footnotes

Outline

• Body
  • Countering Sedentarism
  • HIIT: Getting Fit
  • The 20/20/20 Rule: Preventing Myopia
• Mind
  • Heart Rate Variability: Recharging Will-Power
  • The Focused and Diffuse Modes of Thinking: Getting Unstuck
  • Reflection & Planning: Getting on Track
• Conclusion

Two months ago, I was invited to my first "Work Marathon". A few hundred people would get together in a shared Zoom call for four days of working near maximum capacity. The organizers, Team Ultraworking, guaranteed that the combination of accountability and structure—work was to be divided into "cycles" of 30 minutes of working and 10 minutes of reflecting and preparing—would make me four times as productive as normal. If the promise held up, it would be well worth the $100 investment. So I signed up.

A day and a half into the marathon, I realized it was not for me. The shared Zoom call was a source of stress—not of healthy accountability. The mere knowledge of several hundred eyeballs staring out of one of the many windows I had minimized in my menu bar was a distraction—if not the premise for an Orwellian nightmare.

Meanwhile, the regular breaks felt disruptive and annoying—not the boon of structure I had longed for. I hd never had much success before with the Pomodoro technique¹, so I really shouldn't have been surprised. The allure of mythical productivity gains had swept me up and suppressed my better judgment.

So I ended up dropping out of the marathon to return to my one-big-chunk-of-uninterrupted-working-time ways. The Ultraworking Team made good on their guarantee, and I got the money back, in exchange for the sinking feeling that I had failed my fellow productivity supplicants.

As much as I tried to convince myself that I had made the right call—that I had laughed the sunk cost fallacy demon in the face yet lived to tell the tale—I couldn't shake the idea that perhaps I was in the wrong. That I hadn't tried hard enough to stick to the work marathon to see the benefits mature.

So I returned to the laboratory that is my agenda and spent a few weeks deep in the Pomodoro and all its variations. Supplemented with all the research I could find, my experiments led me to switch camps: I now believe that the best and really only sustainable way to structure your work is in half hour-ish blocks of time with at least a few moments to take pause in between.

In the rest of this article, I would like to take you through the reasons why you should consider incorporating more breaks in your daily routine.

Body

Countering Sedentarism

We've all heard that "sitting is the new smoking". Barring the fact that sitting still is not nearly as bad for us as actual smoking [1], it is not good for us. Worst of all are long periods of uninterrupted sitting.

From Dunstan et al. [2]:

"Intriguingly, adults whose sedentary time was mostly uninterrupted (prolonged unbroken sitting) had a poorer cardio-metabolic health profile compared to those who interrupted, or had more frequent breaks in their sedentary time [49]. These associations were observed even when accounting for total sedentary time and time spent in moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity."

Quitting our sedentary jobs is not a possibility for most of us, but at least we can stave off the worst impacts of sedentarism by getting up frequently. Dunstan et al. point out there are not yet any "definitive recommendations on how long people should sit . . . or how often people should break up their sitting time," but moving around for thirty seconds every half hour certainly will not hurt. This has been my baseline: let's call it "30m/30s".

As for standing desks², 30m/30s still seems like a reasonable injunction. Sitting wreaks more than just "cardio-metabolic" havoc; there's also the musculoskeletal component. And I dare say that not moving in a standing position for long periods of time will not do your joints and muscles much better than not moving in a sitting position for long periods of time.

HIIT: Getting Fit

Taking frequent breaks is not just a tonic against sedentarism but also the founding principle behind that voguest of workout trends: high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Minute-for-minute, we know that HIIT is more efficient than its continuous, lower-intensity alternatives [3]—so much so that a single seven-minute workout a day can have a major effect (for example, decreasing waist circumference by 4cm in only six weeks)[4].

If so, why not view your working sessions as extended breaks in a day-long HIIT circuit? Even a 30s break is ample time to get your heart-rate up, and, in my own experience, a quick set of jumping jacks is the perfect way to recharge my energy levels.

Don't content yourself to just maintaining your current health level against the blight of sedentarism. Use your breaks to one-up that nefarious rogue and get fit for minimum input.

The 20 rule: Preventing Myopia

Next to our cardiometabolic and musculoskeletal health, there's eye health to think about. The 20/20/20 rule recommends us to take 20 seconds every 20 minutes to look at an object at least 20 ft in the distance.

Conventionally, opthamologists tout this rule as an antidote to eye strain. Less conventionally, amateur biohackers follow the 20/20/20 rule an preventive measure against screen-induced myopia. In fact, the End Myopia community³ recommends longer breaks: five minutes of distance-viewing for every 20 minutes of close work or a longer one-hour break every three hours.

Mind

Heart rate variability: Recharging Will-power

Will-power is finite. In a single session, the more you use, the less you will have left over at the end [5]. This phenomenon, known as "Ego Depletion", is why we are most susceptible to binging Netflix, junk food, etc. at the end of a long day of will-power-heavy work.

Fortunately, there are tricks to recharge will-power. A key angle of attack is to increase heart rate variability (HRV), the variation in time intervals between heart beats. Within limits (let's say anywhere less than full-blown atrial fibrillation), a higher HRV is associated to higher self-control [6].

Your break is a perfect time to increase heart rate variability and, in turn, recharge will-power. This you can accomplish through slow breathing techniques [6] or quick bursts of exercise [7]. You need breaks not just for physical health but for your mental ability to focus.

The Focused and Diffuse Modes of Thinking: Unstucking Yourself

Our brain operates in one of two distinct modes: the task-positive network and task-negative network. These systems are mutually exclusive—at any given moment you occupy either one or the other but not both. [8]

As its name suggests, the task-positive network (also "focused" mode) is well-suited to completing clearly defined tasks and close-ended problems. Meanwhile, the task-negative network (also "default mode network" or "diffuse" mode), is well-suited to creative work where tasks are not clearly defined and the problems open-ended [9].

Excelling in the information economy requires a balance between the two systems, but the conventional workday overemphasizes the focused mode. This is great for minimizing distraction but is more likely to get stuck—you fail to see the bigger picture and are blind to indirect solutions.

When we end up stuck on a problem, one of the best things we can do is to take a few minutes away from the problem in the diffuse mode. Our unconscious machinery will continue working on the problem until we have one of those "a-ha!" moments, usually while doing something totally unrelated to the problem at hand.

So take a break to free up your full mental arsenal. A quick walk can do you wonders.

Review & Reflection: Ontracking Yourself

Let us come back to the work marathon: Team Ultraworking recommends a 30m/10m cycle because the 10m break affords ample time to reflect on how the previous cycle went and to plan what you will do for the next cycle.

They provide an app, Headquarters, that helps you schedule these work cycles. It begins every cycle by asking you questions like "What am I trying to accomplish this cycle", "How will I get started", and "Do I anticipate any hazards and how can I mitigate them?" It also asks you to log your energy and morale—so you know when to do some jumping jacks or get a glass of water. It ends every cycle with questions like "Did I complete this cycle's target", "Was there anything noteworthy or distracting", and "What can I improve for next cycle?"

Ostensibly, these questions help you iteratively get better at reducing distraction and planning your work. But I actually think the more impactful consequence is that these moments of pause help you catch yourself when you have gone astray—for example, if after watching an educational YouTube video, you have accidentally stumbled into the YouTube death spiral. The cyclical work structure limits the amount of damage that any lapse in will-power can inflict.

This is especially helpful for open-ended tasks that are hard to estimate. The guided reflection helps you make the abstract goals a little more tangible and concrete.⁴

Conclusion

All in all, we should be taking frequent breaks in our work day not just for the sake of our physical health but for the sake of the work itself.

Key to making the most of these breaks is to impose some structure. Impose a time limit and do not let the pause become an excuse to scroll Reddit or Instagram or Twitter or whatever platform your digital Achilles's heel tends to be. Instead, keep your mind free and undistracted.

The reason I had little success with the Pomodoro technique in the past was that I had absorbed the idea that interruption was equivalent to distraction. I felt that the breaks of the Pomodoro circuit were brakes to productive work. This was wrong. So long as you actually treat the break as a break, you will find it incredibly easy to slip back into whatever problem you were working on. To a large extent, the ability to drop into flow is something you can train and facilitate with the right external structure.

Exactly how to structure the break is up to you and to the work at hand. When I have several hours to spend on grunt work—on simply getting through a list of tasks, I tend to keep my breaks a little longer and put more effort into planning each cycle. When the work at hand has a more restricted focus that will require several cycles (such as writing this article), I prefer shorter breaks to keep my mind closer to the problem.

At the very least, take 30 seconds to stand up, move around, and look in the distance. At the most, take 10 minutes to reflect and plan, run outside, squeeze in a seven-minute work out, get a cup of tea, go to the bathroom, and do a bit of tidying up.

I'll be coming back to the work marathon in the future (if not on Zoom then in spirit). And I'll be continuing to integrate work cycles into all of my workdays. It's not so much a nicety (or because Pomodoro timers are so hip and trendy) but a must when you spend 10 hours a day behind the screen.

If you're interested in trying this out yourself, Team Ultraworking is running a work marathon this very week. Check it out to get started. I trust you will have more success knowing everything I didn't know than I did.

Footnotes

If you're anything like me, you probably spend too much time on the computer. (The fact that you're currently reading this isn't really helping your case.) That's unfortunate because, as you already know and likely try to ignore, screen time is slowly killing us. It's a perfect storm of sedentariness and repetitive stress that all but guarantees us a miserable and arthritic old age.

As any other chronic affliction, screen time slays some victims more easily than others. I have discovered the hard way that I fall into this category of highly injury-prone computer users. In fact, I am one of the most injury-prone people I know.

Now, I don't mean this in a competitive way (though I am a bit of a hypochondriac). If you are more injury-prone than I am, then, well. . . good for me, I guess. I'm just stating an observation: between 18 and 22, my left side has suffered a runner's knee, a climber's elbow, and emac's pinky (more on that later). The right has seen a dash of carpal tunnel, then, this year, it was a serving of swimmer's shoulder, followed, a few weeks ago, by a small serving on the left.

What all this means is that I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to adjust my routines around computers to minimize injury risk while simultaneously maximizing productive recovery. And I'd like to share some of what I've taken away, so that maybe you to do a better job than I have.

A disclaimer: I have absolutely no medical or physiotherapeutic certifications, and you should definitely consult the officially knowledgeable folk before me.

I've broken down these items into two categories. Take them at your leisure:

1. At the computer
2. Away from the computer

At the Computer

Keyboard

I'm an emacs junkie.¹ Besides the obvious perks (flying through code, never having to touch vim), there is a rather unfortunate risk that accompanies regular use: emacs pinky. Every key combination begins with either the control or meta (option) key, and emacs involves rather a lot of key combinations, so if you don't watch out, you'll end up with a repetitive stress injury (RSI) in your left pinky.

Two years ago, I found myself suddenly at the mercy of this terrible affliction. And I have to say that moving through code without my key combinations (at the speed of molasses) was almost as painful as the originating pangs in my little finger.

Fortunately, I've been able to completely resolve this issue. What makes this unique is that it's the only issue I've been able to remedy entirely at the computer.

First, I reprogrammed my keyboard. I moved my control key to my caps lock and my option key to tab. This helped some, but it couldn't keep emacs pinky at bay forever. The problem returned.

The thing that really made the difference was getting the Kinesis Advantage2, the gold standard of ergonomic keyboards. Not only is the keyboard delightfully contoured to your hands (and in a placement much more comfortable to your shoulders), but it moves your modifier keys to your thumbs. Emacs pinky be gone.

After only two days, I was up and running at a reasonable speed. After two weeks, I was faster than I'd ever been. And in the two years since, I've never again suffered emacs pinky. As for my thumbs, they are pretty confident that they can avoid a petty little finger disease.

Mouse

It is, of course, the highest calling of any emacs user to transcend one day beyond the squalid, paltry computer mouse. The moments of transit between keyboard and mouse rack up to hours and years over one's lifetime—hours and years that go to waste.

As much as I would like to achieve that mouseless nirvana, I must admit that I still lapse into base dealings with that antiquated navigating device.

When I purchased the Advantage2, it was second-hand and included an ergonomic mouse, the Contour Unimouse, which I have used ever since.

Even though the unimouse is a feat of ergonomic perfection (and I'd consider myself a fan), there's a fundamental problem with the whole mouse thing. If you make lots of movements left-and-right and back-and-forth (as is often the case with design-related programs like Photoshop), you put your shoulder at risk of injury.

Accessibility Features (TTS and Head-based navigation)

That's what happened to me earlier this year when I as spending a lot of time working with wireframes. Now, because I had to avoid using my right arm as much as possible while still accessing mouse-like functionality, I began to explore the accessibility features available on my computer.

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I thought that we had made more progress in computer vision and audio—that text-to-speech was a solved problem and that pupil-tracking would be a walk in the park. But no. Text-to-speech was nowhere near ready for programming and only marginally useful for conventional writing tasks (such as for these articles). Despite my ardent wishes to contrary, my pupils will remain untracked for some time yet (at least at my price point).

On the bright side, my computer did have built-in gaze tracking, and that, surprisingly, was not too bad. Even better, I could configure facial expressions to function as different kinds of mouse interactions: kissy face for click, open mouth for press-and-hold, tongue-out for double-click, etc. Now, I won't pretend that this was working more easily than the mouse. My shoulder ultimately recovered, and I fled away from these accessibility features as soon as I could. That said, I'm happy to know that these features exist for the people who need them.

Foot Pedals

The natural next step in my ergonomic evolution—after more effectively engaging my thumbs with the Advantage2—was, of course, ergonomic foot pedals—again from kinesis, this time as a Christmas gift from a dear friend.

Finally, I could cast the emacs modifiers wholly away from my hands to play the control and alt keys like a bass and hi-hat of a drumkit. Finally, I could entirely free my pinky from the shift key as an extra precaution against its emacs-induced adversary.

This took a bit longer to learn to coordinate, and, unlike the Advantage2, I'm not sure that it has yet conferred a speed boost. It's also a little harder to transport. Nowadays, I take the Advantage2 with me whererever I go (yes, even when it occupies like 50% of my handbag allowance), but the foot pedals are just a tad too heavy. They're also just a tad too inconvenient to set up at a mobile work station.

That said, they definitely help add to my intimidation factor at the keyboard. And in the long-term, I'm sure I'll master them yet.

Screen Height

Fortunately, my back has not yet been a serious victim of the chronic injury demon inside of me. Part of that is probably because I usually sit, as my brother would say, "as if [I] have a stick up my ass." In more polite words: my posture is usually okay.

If you're often working on a laptop as I do, then the number one item I would recommend (the thing that has most helped me maintain my stick-in-ass posture) is a portable laptop stand. These are cheap—you can get them for less than $20.

Chairs

Full discloser: in this area, I have even less experience than I do in the other areas. The only "high-end" chair I've ever had was a used HÅG Calisco. I chose it because (1) I liked the idea of a saddle seat, (2) I wanted the increased height (I would be able to use the chair with a standing desk at its full height), and (3) I was taken in by the idea of using the chair in multiple directions (see gif below). In practice, I found it to be rather uncomfortable and inconvenient ¹, and the multiple positions thing was a rather poor substitute for getting up and moving around.

I decided that this was one of those "ergonomic" chairs that is more statement piece than really ergonomic. Unfortunate.

What's more unfortunate is that fake ergonomicity seems to be endemic among "non-traditional" office chairs. Consider the kneeling chair variety (pictured below). Vendors claim that these chairs decrease lower-back pain (LBP), but researchers can just as easily find evidence to the contrary [1]. Optimal sitting posture (for reducing LBP) remains controversial [2].²

So the jury is still out. All I can say is snoop around and try a bit of everything before deciding. As for me, I'll be going back to a more traditional kind until I can afford to sample the full zoo.

Standing Desks

Just as these non-traditional office chairs, standing desks have gone viral. Every hip-looking office space is full of them, and even schools are starting to recruit standing desks, usually under the banner of obesity-prevention [3] [4]. For what it's worth, you really do seem to burn more calories while standing [5]. In the vein of this article, standing desks may also reduce risk of upper back/neck pain while increasing productivity [6].

From my own personal experience, standing desks are not all they're hyped up to be. I find them useful as an add-on—as an alternative for some of my day's sitting hours—but not as a full-time replacement. To me, the problem seems to be not so much not standing as not moving. Long-term, the only difference between not moving while sitting and not moving while standing is where—not whether—the injuries will occur. It's just that, short-term, it's easier to move while already standing.

Just make sure that if you are standing, you're standing correctly. And no, I don't mean this facetiously. Many of us have shitty posture when either sitting or standing.

Away From the Computer

Except for the example of emacs pinky, the most effective intervention I've encountered has always been away from the computer.

Before you go to empty your wallet on an ergonomic keyboard, go out and get some exercise—more than anything else work on the mobility stuff. You have a lot of catching up to do when you spend your whole day not moving.

Unfortunately, spending less time at the computer isn't really an option for most of us. We need to make a living in this information economy, and it doesn't help that our main conduit to many of our relationships is online. A minimum of eight hours a day online seems to be a hard fact of life—so be it.

Probably my number one recommendation is to set a Pomodoro timer, or something similar, to ensure that you get out of your chair (or out of your standing position) every half hour, so you remember to jump around and just move. There's nothing quite so invigorating and healing.

The other thing that has worked for me is that when I sense an oncoming injury, I change my exercise routine. Most chronic injuries seem to result from muscle imbalance, and all the ergonomic gear in the world won't fix that if you won't first fix your movement patterns. As long as I'm slow and careful, a change in exercise doesn't aggravate my injuries but speeds up my recovery.

That said, remember that I'm no doctor and my advice is completely anecdotal and highly doubtful. You should not listen to any of this.

We're stuck in a shitty interim period—between the conception of desk work and the invention of reliable brain-computer interfaces. All I can say is that it sucks. It really fucking sucks. That and I wish you all the best in your own injury-prevention journey. I'd love to hear what kinds of fixes you've worked on, or if any of my experiences end up working for you. This certainly won't be the last I have to write on the subject, so until next time. . .