All Those Empty Calories

It may be an artifact that we're all getting older, but almost everyone I know has gained a few pounds over the last few years. It makes sense, for the 36 months of being locked indoors, away from the world, what else could you really do but enjoy a movie/show, sit around on Zoom calls, and occasionally get outside for some exercise, but it primarily was a long, long, loooooong sludge.

And yeah, I've been thinking a lot about how I lost those pounds I gained while everything went insane.

It's hard, too - I'm older than I was (obviously) and not as active as I used to be, but it seems harder and harder to shed extra pounds.

That's a long way of saying that I've been thinking a lot about calories. What do you put into your body that fuels you, and more importantly, those empty calories?

Empty calories are food and beverages consumed throughout the day that consists mainly of items that provide little nutritional value; those that are high in calories but low in nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Instead, junk food, sugary sodas, processed snacks, fast food meals, and desserts are loaded with added sugars, unhealthy fats, and refined carbohydrates.

In other words - they don't do anything of value for you (well, okay - except maybe they taste good).

If you've been reading Makoism for a while, you know my obsession with time.

• Tempus Fugit - Time can only be spent once. Spend well
• The Narrative - There's almost an epidemic of crappy news and a general bad vibe around us, 24 hours a day. Social media has devolved into nothing more than junk food for your brain.
• What You Leave Behind - ‌We don't create the meaning of our life — we discover it.
• Forty Three Percent - ‌Are you making the most of your weeks?

It could be an unhealthy obsession. We'll see.

Recently, I've been trying to become acutely aware of time wasters. And if you equate wasting time as empty calories in the day, holy shit, I consume way too many junk calories every week.

What if you imagine your week, like your diet?

You have 10,080 minutes a week. Minus 3,360 minutes for sleep (8 hours a night, 7 days), you have 6,720 minutes to fill yourself with stuff—work, exercise, mindfulness, reading, play, joy, etc.

How much time do you spend, scrolling through Instagram.
How much time do you spend, in countless useless meetings you don't need to attend.
How much time do you spend, surrounding yourself with overtly negative people.
How much time do you spend, watching hours and hours of reality TV. (Heck, I watched Guy Fieri for hours yesterday consume crazy food across the country; that's almost a double negative calorie.)

"We will start to realize that being chained to your mobile phone is a low-status behavior, similar to smoking." - Max Fisher, The Chaos Machine

When I fill the day with too much of that stuff, those empty calories by wasting time, I find that I start to suffer from:

• Decreased Productivity: Wasting time consumes precious hours that could be spent on meaningful tasks or responsibilities. It leads to a lack of progress, unfinished projects, and increased stress.
• Distraction and Lack of Focus: Wasting time on unproductive activities which distract and shift focus away from the important goals and priorities.
• Missed Opportunities: Wasting time actively blocks opportunities for learning, growth, and personal development. It can hinder one's ability to acquire new skills, gain knowledge, or advance in their career.
• Regret and Frustration: Wasting time often, for me, results in internal regret and frustration due to unproductive choices I made throughout the day; it directly impacts my self-esteem and overall satisfaction.
• Most significantly - I feel a lack of balance: wasting time can disrupt the balance between work and my personal life. When I have too many empty calories, I feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled, missing out on meaningful experiences.

So, an area of growth for me now is that I'm actively trying to become more aware of my time management. I am making conscious choices to optimize my daily routines so that I get time to fill my time with things that are productive and lead me towards more personal growth. Not filling my day with as much empty calories as I have previously. It's why I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

If any of this sounds familiar, try to take a step back and look at how you're spending your time. Try to make conscious choices, not mindless doomscrolling, to fill your hours with things that provide you nourishment.

You might find, just like consuming nutrient-dense foods, spending time on things of value instead of going through the motions, you'll find everything gets a little better.

If you enjoy these posts, you can buy me a coffee ☕️, check out my store or just share my work. If you'd rather just keep up with my daily ramblings, follow me via your favorite RSS reader, via Mastodon or keep reading my posts on this blog. Your support is much appreciated!

Mind Benders 🤯

Not really sure what to say about this one, but How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954] was a curious read.

"The 12-minute film shows what happens when clean, white houses are subjected to heat waves from an atomic blast, versus what happens when a dingy, ill-kept house goes through the same drill. It turns out that neat people can not only claim moral victory (as they always do). They also get to live another day. Consider it proof of the survival of the tidiest."

Quotables 📚

"Many people view their habits and routines as obstacles or, at the very least, obligations to get through. Making the morning coffee, driving your kids to the next activity, preparing the next meal—we often see our routines as chores to be completed.

But these are not moments to be dismissed. They are life. Making coffee can be a peaceful ritual—perhaps even a fulfilling one—if done with care rather than rushed to completion. It’s about the amount of attention you devote to these simple moments, and whether you choose to appreciate them or bulldoze through them on the way to the next task.

Find the beauty and joy in your daily rituals and you will find beauty and joy in your daily life. To love your habits is to love your days, and to love your days is to love your life."

• via James Clear

Brain Dump 🧠

Here are a few articles and videos that resonated with me over the last week:

• I mentioned something similar on LinkedIn last week, and based on the response, it seems like everyone is feeling some form of exhaustion. The sentiment that 'I'm wasting all this time I could spend... truly living and having fun and being happy' sums it up better than I could. A great read. — [via Layers of exhaustion]
• 99% of the human population was wiped out 930,000 years ago, leaving around 1,300 individuals who contributed to maintaining the population. Read more about what caused a sudden collapse in civilization — [via New analysis suggests human ancestors nearly died out]
• Another article on calendar glut and a radical refocusing on time. I liked the approach here on focusing on calendars as tools, and you should use that to organize time. Spend two days on things you love doing, two days on neutral tasks, and one day free. Love it. — [via You Don’t Work For Your Calendar]
• I had the privilege of hearing Per Håkansson, author of the newsletter Fewer Better Things speak at the DO Wales 2023 conference back in July and was struck by his commitment on reducing clutter and scaling back to the bare essentials. Per talks about some of the behavioral mindset and psychology on why we're attached to things in this post. — [via Why we are so attached to our things]
• The fires in Lahaina were tragic, yet this solo house survived it. Read about the miracle 'last house standing' and why it was spared from destruction. — [via What Saved The ‘Miracle House’ In Lahaina?]
• I loved this post on how 'energy makes time.' And more importantly, it asks the question, 'how does doing what I need to make time for everything else?' — [via Energy makes time]
• I've said it in previous newsletters, but the most important thing you have is time. "When you're young, you are literally rich with time. At age 20, you probably have about two billion seconds left (assuming you live to 80). By 50, just one billion seconds remain. We don't relate to ourselves as the Time Billionaires that we really are. Most of us fail to realize the value of this asset until it is gone." — [via The Time Billionaire: A Concept That Changed My Life]
• Not many surprises in this one, but it was all excellent advice about being concrete, asking questions, and having confidence. A good refresher, though, and a list of skills to keep practicing with. — [via New Research Reveals 5 Secrets That Will Make You Persuasive]
• I've tried. I've failed (which is why I now have a succulent), but the concepts behind successfully cultivating a bonsai tree are a good read. — [via The secret philosophy of cultivating a bonsai tree]
• Ooo, this is a tough one: 'how do you set goals that are just beyond reach (unreasonable) but not so far as to make the goal meaningless (unrealistic)?' This is an excellent article on pursuing the impossible. — [via The Art of Being Unreasonable]

This Weeks Vibe 🎸

It's been a month this week. Feels like this video, a news report in which 'a man was pulled over by Nebraska police after an onlooker reported him driving with a full-sized bull named Howdy Doody in his passenger seat' sums it up nicely.

Be well. ✌🏻