#but then as i was playing my nintendo i started listening to the audiobook in the background too and

[13eyond13]

.

[anonymus-enby]

my relationship with food (part 2)

Right know I’m doing better than in those phases. And if I had the money, I could eat out every single day. But deep down I know that it’s still not good enough yet with me easily skipping a meal a day and when I make myself some lunch its not as much as it should be. And like mentioned before- dinner is also not that enjoyable. Ironically, when I went to the two therapists that went to (only for one session each) I didn’t really mentioned it because I guess in my head it is not really real- or I just don’t want to worry about another problem, you know?

Oh my, this is again much longer than I expected. I hope it was not too confusing. But there are so many things to talk about and I constantly fear that I am forgetting important things. I guess I could just write it in my next post if I forgot something and mark it with [edit for last post]

[edit for last post] my hobbies

Alright, I totally forgot to mention my hobbies in my “that’s me” post. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about that now. I feel like generally I like everything and nothing at the same time. I am always jealous of the people that have like one distinctive hobby that they love so much, they spent every time they have on it. I don’t really think I have that. But before I start to write an essay again. I am going to try and sum it up a bit:

I like to…

… read (favourite book: the secret history by Donna Tart)

… learn languages (I am learning Swedish right now)

… film and edit YouTube videos (but since I am anonymous here I can not say what my channel is called)

… watch TV Shows and movies (I’m currently watching the show ‘criminal minds’ recommended by a friend and I absolutely love it! Especially Reid of course ;) I just started season 4. Movies are a bit hard to generalize but some of my favourite movies are: ‘bohemian rhapsody’, ‘the greatest show’, ‘dead poets society’, ‘call me by your name’ and probably much more that just don’t come to my mind right now)

… play video games (mostly something for the Nintendo switch. I wish I had money to buy the new Zelda and Mario game. But I also sometimes ‘play league of legends’ with my brother)

… cook and bake (ironic I know, concerning the topic of this post)

… make music (I play a little bit of piano and the guitar, and I make wannabe songs with lame lyrics and always the same easy chords. Also, they are mostly really depressed or really depending on my mood. And sometimes there are other songs in-between)

… make friendship bracelets (I know, it sound kind of lame but it is actually quite calming. Especially when you listen to an audiobook or a podcast while you make the bracelet)

… explore things that interest me- but never enough to actually remember things (like Greek mythology. That shit is crazy)

… say good-bye now (wow, what a creative transition!) I hope once again I didn’t forget anything, but this is it for now. See you later!

Anonymus

[oswincoleman]

2020 Jenna Coleman’s Year in Review, part 2: Acting

Death Be Not Proud (Inside No. 9 series 5 episode 2)

Jenna Coleman secretly filmed this back in early 2019, before she started rehearsing for her theatre production of All My Sons. It took almost a year after that, for the rest of the episodes of the series to be filmed, and released. This remains the only film or TV role of Jenna that was released this year. And although the initial promotion for it appeared to show Jenna in the leading role in the episode, that turned out to just be a ruse to hide the secret of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith reprising their roles from Psychoville in Inside No. 9, so her total screentime was only about 10 minutes or so. 

It was an interesting episode, though not quite to my tastes, and Jenna played her role brilliantly as always. With the way it ended, it was like a bit of a teaser of what was to come. 

This was her only appearance in film and television this year. Throughout her acting career since 2005, Jenna has always had substantially more screentime every year, than she did this year. The only exceptions being 2010 and 2011. Of course that is mostly not her fault; The Serpent would have been out much earlier without the pandemic. 

The Serpent

After 4 months of intensive filming for The Serpent in the latter half of 2019, Jenna Coleman felt somewhat burnt out, and went on holiday with her parents to the Maldives in January. She described her experience there in a travel article she published later in the year.

Filming for The Serpent finally resumed in February,after a 2 month break, because Tahar Rahim has been working on a film in the meantime. This long break however proved to be quite problematic, as after only 3 weeks of filming, production had to be halted, due to the spread of COVID-19, with just 5 days of filming left to do.

There had already been plans for events to advertise The Serpent, but these were canceled.

Filming for The Serpent finally resumed in August. But unlike what had been planned, of filming the last few scenes in Bangkok and Budapest, they were shot in a manor in the small English town of Tring. A set had been built up there to resemble an apartment in Bangkok. Everyone whk was working on it at the time respected health guidelines, and so managed to safely complete filming in 2 weeks.

So in total, Jenna only spent 5 weeks filming this year, and she wasn’t even required to film on all of those days.

A Separate Peace

But over the course of the year, with the pandemic making filming difficult to impossible, Jenna instead diverted her attention to acting in other ways.

Most notably amongst those was A Separate Peace by Tom Stoppard; a virtual theatre performed by multiple actors over Zoom. It marked a significant improvement over actors merely reading text out loud, was amazing to watch, and was strongly praised as the best alternative to actual theatre currently available.

Jenna played 22 year old nurse Maggie Coates, who tended to, and befriended a patient, played by David Morrissey, who arrived at the hospital without having any medical issue whatsoever.

It was short and poignant, and it was amazing to see Jenna in this role. But info have some criticism about the producers. With minimal promotion for it, the turnout could have been much better. It was announced to be the first in a series of virtual theatre performances like this, and it seemed as though this was sort of a test run, to see whether this was possible at all, to see whether the media liked it, or not. The reaction to it was overwhelmingly positive, with very great reviews praising it’s ability to at least achieve some semblance of theatre despite all the restrictions preventing live theatre performances. It was even praised as among the best of theatre in 2020 (https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/2020-Year-In-Review-Gary-Naylors-Best-of-Theatre-20201207). 

After seeing those reviews, which were shared much more widely than the initial promotion for it, I saw lots of people who either wanted to watch the production, but couldn’t, as it was only shown once, and was not shared by the producers afterwards, or were interested in watching future installments of such virtual theatre performances. But the producers of this virtual theatre performance did not produce any other ones, despite initially announcing that they would. And even though it was understandable at the time, that they were unwilling to share the recording of the performance, as the money from the tickets did go to charity, and they did not want people to know that they could still watch future similar performances without having to pay anything, as they did not make any other similar production, it is perplexing why they never made the recording of this play available. 

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

As the pandemic prevented most types of acting for large parts of the year, Jenna instead turned her attention to several audio performances.

Way back in 2011, Jenna voiced Princess Melia in the English dub of the fantasy role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles. 10 years after the initial release, Nintendo worked on a new release; Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, with updated graphics, gameplay, and a whole new extra storyline, that prominently features Melia. It was released on the 29th of May 2020. 

Since Jenna rose to fame after she originally voiced Melia, the Xenoblade Chronicles fandom thought it very unlikely that Jenna would return to voice Melia again in the new release. But against all odds, she did return. It is unclear when she recorded the new lines for Melia, but I think it was probably in January or February this year, and Jenna has still never commented publicly about this role, or her reprisal of it. 

Though I haven’t played the game, you can watch all the cutscenes of the game here: https://youtu.be/Tsgy1h5x8VU and the phrases Melia says througout the gameplay here: https://youtu.be/l7oDcI8HmI4

Pressures, Residential

On July 12th, Esquire UK released a recording of Jenna Coleman reading the short story “Pressures, Residential” by Philip Hensher, in support of Unicef UK, as part of the Esquire Summer Fiction Series. It’s a creepy story told brilliantly by Jenna. It’s always lovely to listen to her incredible voice. You can listen to the story here: https://youtu.be/VSpc4H-z40A

The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

On the 17th of September, the audiobook collection “Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales” was released, in which Jenna read the story of “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies”. 

Charlie Waller Virtual Carol Service

On the 7th of December 2020, the Charlie Waller Trust held a virtual Chirstmas carol service, that had been pre-recorded, and was streamed over youtube for those that bought a ticket earlier. As part of the event, Jenna Coleman read an extract of a Christmas carol poem by George Wither. 

Additional Comments

With a lack of projects this year and the last, and with Victoria series 3 not being recieved that well, Jenna unfortunately didn’t win any awards, and wasn’t even nominated for any awards this year. Even though I think she was nominated and won far too few awards for her recent work, she at least had managed to maintain a success of several award nominations, and at least one win every year since 2016. 

2020 has also been the first year of her acting career, since 2005, in which she didn’t officially get announced to have been cast in a new film or TV role, or had the certainty of continuing to play a role that she had already played, in the next year. 

Even though Jenna Coleman was involved in many different projects this year, overall, she did not have any work to do for the vast majority of this year. With the TV and film industry being shut down or at least massively reduced for large parts of the year, there might not have been that many roles for her to audition for. We know that Jenna went on two holidays, and she had shared a bit of what she got up to during lockdown in this article: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/fashion-news/g32374333/self-isolate-with-jenna-coleman/ But for the most part, it remains somewhat unclear what she did this year. We know she kept up French lessons for The Serpent, she did some gardening, possibly attended some photography courses, and possibly tried her hand at painting. She revealed all of that in May, and hasn’t talked about what she did with her time since then. 

There is a possibility that she had been working on renovating her new house in the Cotswolds for some time this year. And there is also the possibility of her having already started filming work for her secret new project; after all it remains unclear where she was during her latest Galaxycon Q&A session. 

Overall, this year has not been great for Jenna from an acting perspective. But 2021 will definitely be better! The Serpent airs on January on BBC, and will be released on Netlix sometime later that year. And then there’s also Jenna’s secret new project. Depending on what it is, we might even see that come out towards the end of 2021. 

[liddiespeaks]

Rich Dad Poor Dad - Book Review

Rich Dad Poor Dad 

By Robert Kiyosaki -Book Review

Before Rich Dad Poor Dad

To give you a little back story on me before i begin, i’ve never really been too good with money. I didn’t know how to save/invest or even spend the money that i earned. I thought i was going to have to work some crummy job, living pay-check to pay-check with constant burnout that i seemed to never recover from. Work for someone else until i reach that point in my existence where i might be physically unable to continue performing at the job. I had a very (for lack of a better word)”poor” understanding of how money works. With this mindset, i reached completely burnout at 22going-on23 years old. I was depressed, anxious, and suicidal….. I completely stopped working and spent my days just laying in bed…sleeping….and the off chance i wasn’t sleeping, i was playing Fortnite on my Nintendo Switch. This lead to me losing my apartment because i couldn’t afford it anymore. I moved in with my older brother and his family, after a couple of months i realized i couldn’t keep going like this, i needed to do something, anything. I started working the nightshift as a security guard to get a bit of any income so i don’t feel like such a burden to my family. (They never said that i was or even implied it in anyway. It was just me pushing judgement upon myself. I was more harsh on myself than anyone could ever be.) Long story short, my friend made me realize that i have all the free time in the world to learn anything that i wanted. I was blinded, in a fog of depression and anxiety. In a loop of torture that i put myself through, i thought i deserve it. If it wasn’t for my family and friends being supportive i don’t know where i’d be. I started using my time to read and listen to audiobooks and found “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.

After Finding Rich Dad Poor Dad

This book was incredibly written. It was engaging and motivating. Gave me a new perspective on life and it’s lessons as well as money and how to “make it work for you”. It tells you little secrets about how to let the power of knowing brighten you in the present moment. It encourages you to take “educated risks” and learn as much as you can about economics. Once you learn and use the knowledge that you’ve gained through your research and testing you’ll be unstoppable. Now, granted things like owning a business might now be the best option for everyone but there are plenty of ways to invest your money in things that will give you a passive income and a peace of mind, touching on things like saving your money as well. For me personally i feel like i have never been more motivated to pursue, save, and invest time and money. I want to be able to do things for my family, take care of them. Go on adventures and spend time together, all of us. If you’re looking for a book to jumpstart you and give you a forward push towards success, i recommend “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. Keep it in your library and keep it present. 

Peace out everyone, thanks for reading

Love Liddie

[justgleekout]

@gorgxoxus did this “list 50 things that you love” thing. And I thought I’d give it a shot as negativitie is all around rn and that shit ain’t good for a hsp yo.

Glee! Though mostly watching klaine scenes

Reading and writing fic

Making fanart and looking at the amazing shit other people draw

Watching anything with my gleewatch pals

Talking about glee with friends

Chris Colfer being an amazing person and giving me hope

Darren Criss doing anything silly

Playing guitar

Listening to music

Playing nintendo games

Hanging out with my brother

Watching stupid dutch tv with my mom

Talking about music with my dad

Baking (and succeding)

A big ass plate of good food after a long day

Animals I see omw to my internship (birds, cows, sheep and dogs, mostly)

Nice dreams

Hugs from my housemate

Hanging out with good friends

Summertime

Feeling the warm sun on my skin (and not burning to death)

Beach days

Harry Potter audiobooks

Hearing it storm, rain and thunder at night when I’m in bed

The movie Hairspray

Taking lavender scented baths

Singing

Seeing flowers start to bloom in spring

Making snowmen

Christmas

The smell of bakeries/food places when walking through a city

Making cosplays

Going to cons and other cosplay events

Crafting

Getting attention/recognition about something I’m proud of/something I want to be good at

Sleeping in

My uni building

The cafés in the city I study

Exchanging gifts

Botanical gardens

Spontaneous ideas of ordering food/getting good snacks

Crawling under fresh clean sheets after havin taken a shower

The feeling of having no obligations. Having literally nothing you have to do

Live music performances; concerts, festivals etc

Daydreaming

Laughing really hard about something funny

Rollerskating

Having the idea that someone I think is great, likes me back

Being baffled by nature

Kindness

This was super nice to do. I highly recommend! Tag me if you do this too! I wanna see what makes y’all happy ❤️

Edit: fuck this im gonna tag people: @esperantoauthor @spookyklaine @klainedrops-on-roses and @steph-luvs-klaine you go ahead and write down 50 things that make you happy!

[halberdierminister]

Okay I set meself some new goals for the new year. How have I been keeping up with them?

1) Write 250 Words Each Day

I have missed a couple days this month, but I have certainly written more than the equivalent of 250 words times 31 days. So while I did have some misses, I more than made up for them. This one is both a hit and a miss, but far more hit than miss. I am mostly on track with this goal.

2) Read At Least 55 Books This Year

If we are counting audiobooks, which we ABSOLUTELY ARE, I have finished ten books this month and am close to finishing two more. If I keep up this kind of pace, I will have met my goal by midyear. We will see if that happens, but I am very well on track with this goal.

3) Get A Full Time Job

I have not done this yet. But I did work two jobs all month with a grand total of two days off. I applied for 24 different jobs this month. This doesn't quite equal out to one job per day, and I certainly didn't do this every day, but that's a fair amount of effort. I worked a lot and I worked on the job search a lot. I've also edited my resume, worked on making a brand new one, and designed my own business cards. I think I am making some progress on this but it is just so hard to tell. I am working on this goal, but I do not know if I am on track.

4) Move Out

Yeah obviously this hasn't happened yet. Kiel and Steph have offered to let me move in with them in Milwaukee if I need to or if I get something there. It's so tempting to take them up on it. I might if I have no leads on the job search by the end of March, but both Kiel and I agree that this winds up with the risk that I just get stuck working at Target again. It's so difficult. And yet today, when my parents were out of the house, I hooked up my Nintendo Switch to the television and just played some video games and I also took out my ukulele and sang some dumb songs and I just felt like myself for the first time in a while, and God I just miss that so damn much. I wanna move out so fucking badly it hurts. Ugh. I will get there. I just need the full time job first. I do not know if I am on track.

5) Drink Less Soda

Well, I drank less soda. I didn't cut out soda altogether, but at least half the days, or maybe even most of the days, I didn't have any soda at all. And the days I had soda, I'm pretty sure I limited it to one, except maybe once or twice when it was two. But by and large I am still cutting down on soda. So that's good. I'm not losing weight, but that's probably because I'm not working physically anymore like I was at Target. The last two days I lifted weights, maybe I'll work out more? Either way, I just needed to cut down on soda, and by gum, I have been doing that. I am on track with this goal.

6) Get Something Published

I am going to be published in Eclipse, a fanzine based on Problem Sleuth the Intermissions of Homestuck. I finished the first draft of my fic for it this year. I also found a zine I might want to send some stuff to tonight, and I still intend to send stuff into The Green Light and Red Cedar. I don't know if I have anything good enough for Steam Ticket, but who knows? I should also submit to more places, and I have been bookmarking pages that have promising listings. I am mildly on track with this goal, but I ought to put more into it.

7) Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman

I have written 6,654 words on this fic in this month alone. This is the most frequently I have ever updated it. It is not finished, but with every update I near the ending. Some of the endings have been as short as two or three hundred words, most have been around six or seven hundred, but at least one was fifteen hundred words, making it the longest chapter written in years. I am on track with this goal.

8) Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin

I have not written ANYTHING on this fic this month. I did listen to some Lovecraft on audiobook and I've been reading a lot of poetry, so I'm gaining fuel I suppose, but I am not on track.

MINOR GOALS

9) Finish Playthroughs Of:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -- Success! I beat it on accident and started a new one. So this one is COMPLETED.

Persona 3 Portable 100%: I am on the last day or two. I tried fighting Margaret once this month and got royally scuppered up the barrelstopper. These sorts of super-hard turn-based battles are literally not fun. I also don't have any Armageddons and I don't know if it's possible to beat Margaret or Elizabeth without them. I don't know if it's worth it to try, but I also don't know if I shouldn't beat this and start a new game plus again. It's just……. I'm literally these two boss fights away from 100%, and I've NEVER gotten this close before. Guh. What I really need is Armageddon though. Sigh. Who knows.

Persona 1 Good Ending: Yeah I don't think I picked this up at all this month.

Pokemon Sword: I have beaten the main game and am partially through the post-game plot. It's just kinda boring at this point, but I will beat it I'm sure.

Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: I haven't picked this up this year, but I plan to. It's a fun little game. I'm at Cinnabar Island, so I'm pretty close to the end.

10) Record More Ukulele Videos

I played my ukulele a lot today?? I tried recording a song but didn't like it. I'm working on some stuff though, so I'm not doing this yet but I am at least getting started on practicing and planning

11) Record Let's Play Videos

Not even a little bit.

12) Duolingo?

I've done Spanish on Duolingo every day for 33 days straight. SUCK IT, Me from 2008.

GOALS I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD

13) Set up my turntable and listened to records on my own.

14) Added to my collections of books, amiibos, video games and movies, often in unexpected ways and sometimes at large amounts for little money. And sometimes not. Whoops. I cannot be trusted with money. Ugh.

15) Work out?? I have done so a little bit two days in a row. Maybe I can keep this up and do more. I ought to, since I'm not at Target anymore, and since I won't be at MATC for the time being I will have more free time to do so. It's worth a shot.

So I'm doing pretty well on the ones I can keep track of. I'm not doing PERFECT, but I do think I am doing really well.

This is 1250 words, by the way.

[thanegaming]

We have arrived in Arizona! 40 hours by car. 🚙 On the long drive I listened through my first audiobook, Ready Player One. It was really cool because we passed directly through the setting for “The Stacks” from the film, and the location Wade hides out in the book (Columbus, Ohio)! Loved every minute of it, will be making a video talking about it and the movie in time for its Blu-ray release. I also worked on the entire Gorillaz discography- including “The Fall” heard for the first time. In a case of perfect timing and by complete coincidence, “Amarillo” seriously played while pulling into the actual Amarillo, TX where it was recorded. The only thing I remembered reading about the album was that it was composed entirely on an iPad- I forgot Damon started and finished the project while/because he was touring America. Seeing the opening track “Phoner to Arizona” was perfect then, too. Even got through all five episodes of the Nintendo Power Podcast! 🎧 Great trip overall. When we get settled I’ll start work again on YouTube, I hate taking hiatus so I’ll be back soon 👍🏻 #youtube #nintendopower #nintendo #gorillaz #readyplayerone #arizona (at Sierra Vista, Arizona)

[cureaphrodite]

got tagged by @candycryptids !!! thank u friend! i won’t be tagging anyone else in this bc ffff i’m like never on tumblr anymore idk which of my friends are even active here. but i wanted to answer the questions!!!

Rules.

1. Post the Rules.

2. Answer the questions given to you

3. Make 11 questions of your own.

4. Tag 11 people.

My questions now!

1. What kind of animal would you want as a pet, if like, there was a way to magically meet the requirements and also not have it kill you/die outside of it’s usual environment

honestly at this point i really just want a cat but a) i honestly have no clue how to take care of another living being b) my executive dysfunction would make it impossible to keep my entire apartment cat safe and c) i can’t afford a place that allows pets, rip

BUT keeping with the spirit of this question I WANT AN ALPACA TO PET EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE

2. Is there a show/fandom/comic/book/anything like that that helped shape who you are as a person today?

pretty much magical girl anime as a genre. i ate that shit up as a kid and i still do to this day. i want multiple magical girl themed tattoos

3. Which game systems do you own? (Which is your favorite, and what’s your favorite game on it?) (If you don’t have any game systems, what’s one you’d love to own??)

at this point i only have a 3ds! i’ve never had anything but nintendo systems although i did get to play some ps2 games on my stepdad’s system.i’d probs have to say story of seasons trio of towns is my fave although i haven’t played it NEARLY enough; i’ve only gotten to fall of year one

4. If you’ve listened to The Adventure Zone, what’s your favorite Arc from it? (If you haven’t, I recommend it, but what’s your favorite podcast or show?)

i’ve been sloooooooowly listening to taz; i’m only on the petals to the metal arc so i think it’s too early to pick a fave. HOWEVER i will never pass up a chance to recc scott sigler’s galactic football league series!!! you can buy the books but they’re also FREE SERIALIZED AUDIOBOOKS as podcasts on itunes!!! the rookie is the first one and it’s SO GOOD even if you’re like “ew  football??? what the fuck” just trust me. there’s aliens that are ACTUALLY ALIEN (no humanoids here except for one species that evolved from humans) and organized crime and SPAAAAAAAAAAACE. the main character starts out as a racist asshat but he learns so much and has such good development and i am proud of quentin barnes

(i’m actually behind on gfl i had to stop listening at one point bc i was too busy and never bought the books or caught up sdlfkjasf)

5. Is there anything physically about yourself you’d like to change? (Either to alleviate dysphoria or just because you, like me, are a monster who’d be much happier with more eyes and more teeth)

i don’t necessarily want to be skinny but i want a smaller waist.... i have a really hard time fitting into clothes even though i’m probably on the smaller side of plus size, because i have a really thick waist in comparison to my bust. i can’t sew clothes without seriously modifying the patterns for fit. it’s hard to pull off low waisted pants/skirts too because i have a long torso and short legs and since i have no natural waist i really need something there to create the illusion of one

6. What’s your favorite Pokemon? (Can be more than one! Don’t stress friend!) (If you don’t have a favorite Pokemon, then Digimon? Or just an Animal?)

WHIMSICOTT followed closely by flaafy and lurantis

7. Do you have a dream cosplay you wish you could execute perfectly?

cure flora’s lily mode elegant is the realistic one i will probably actually try to make someday but for TRUE DREAM COSPLAY i’d go with her sakura mode elegant royal!!! how would i do the giant ass lace bow??? good question

8. What’s one thing you want to do before you die?

uhhh this is way harder than it should be??? i honestly don’t really have a bucket list. i’m gonna say get a tattoo

9. When you’re feeling sad, what’s something you do to help feel better?

usually i immerse myself in children’s anime or animal crossing or something. also, makeup

10. Do you have any hobbies that are sort of unusual/that you’d like to learn? (Like, underwater basket weaving, idk)

i really want to learn to spin yarn!!! i tried drop spindling and couldn’t get it right. 

11. This is a lot of questions to make up. You made it! Are you proud of yourself?

MY BIGGEST YEAH BOI EVER

[backfencemagazine]

How to Combat Subscription Fatigue

I know this post comes just one day after I mentioned how everyone who uses Marco Polo (and I mean, if you aren’t using it yet, what are you waiting for???) should sign up for a Plus subscription, but it did get me thinking about subscription fatigue.

Back in the day, you would pay for software once. After about a year, you’d have to purchase the software again if you wanted the latest version. Many companies would offer discounts for people who are upgrading from a previous version. Now, most software vendors have adopted a subscription model where you pay an annual or monthly fee, and upgrades are automatically included in your purchase price. It generally comes out to about the same cost, except for the fact you maybe would skip an upgrade here or there to save some money.

Netflix and others paved the way for a new model, which is the “SaaS” model we are pretty accustomed to now. Paying a monthly or annual fee for the right to use the software is becoming the norm. Now we have new services coming out it seems almost daily, and our small monthly subscription fees are becoming a huge hit to the budget. I even have a whole budget category for it, and it’s growing all the time.

When your subscriptions are becoming overwhelming, it might be time to take a look at them and see which ones you are using and which ones you can live without. It can be pretty hard to make those decisions though. I know it’s difficult for me, since I like keeping things around that I MIGHT use someday soon, even if I’m not using it right this minute.

So, let’s break it down by category!

Apps

There are quite a few apps I keep subscriptions for that I use on a regular basis. Marco Polo is the obvious choice, but there’s also my to-do list app, some smart home apps, Quickbooks Self-Employed, and some photo apps I use for my social media stuff for my blog.

An easy way to see your current and past subscriptions is to open the Google Play store and then select “Subscriptions” from the left side menu. On Apple devices go to Settings then tap on your name and select Subscriptions.

If you use the app on a regular basis, then definitely it’s one to keep, but if you only occasionally use it, definitely consider cancelling it.

TV & Movies

Here’s the biggy. This includes Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and more. New services are coming out regularly too like NBC’s new Peacock service and HBO Max (not to be confused with HBO GO or HBO NOW… they really need to get their branding straightened out, for sure).

You could also be paying for live streaming through YouTube TV, SlingTV, DirecTV Now, or even Hulu. It’s a great idea to add up the costs of all of the entertainment services you are currently paying for and probably cut it down to at least 2. Pick the ones you absolutely could not live without. Then use a #3 slot to switch out different services throughout the year.

For example, if you are paying for SlingTV and Disney+ because you use those regularly, you could sign up for Netflix for 2 months, catch up on the latest seasons or shows that are there, and then cancel and sign up for Hulu for 2 months and catch up there. I really like using this rotating model since there are contracts you can cancel and sign up as often as you want. This also helps make sure you don’t miss out on something great!

Audio

I’m lumping Music and Audiobooks together here because they are both things you listen to. Obviously Audible is #1 in the game here, and Spotify is the #1 for music, but there are definitely other options. If you absolutely have to pick one, obviously go with the one you listen to the most. Are you mostly listening to books? Can you supplement the music portion with an ad supported free subscription to Spotify? Are you a huge music fan, and don’t listen to a ton of books? Definitely weigh the pros and cons here and figure out which one you can’t live without.

Fitness

Another category in my subscription list is fitness. This could be a subscription to a gym, or a streaming fitness service (or in my case, several streaming fitness services… I have a problem). Picking just one service from this category is definitely enough. I would choose a service that inspires you to actually get fit. If you have a subscription you never use, maybe it’s time to find a different one. I would also choose one that has a good variety, but if you like to do the same workouts all the time, than this might not be quite as important to you.

The best fitness program is one you will do, so find one that speaks to you and schedule it into your day.

Reading

I do such a small amount of reading that I almost forgot this category completely. I do listen to books on Audible, but I don’t generally read actual books a ton. It’s not that I don’t like reading, it’s just that I have no self control. If I start a book, I will pretty much do nothing until it is finished, so I just don’t even start. I don’t have time in my life right now to do nothing while I finish a book.

There are a few services for reading books, including Kindle Unlimited from Amazon and Scribd. There are also subscriptions for reading magazines online. I had a subscription to Texture for years until they sold out to Apple and stopped offering it for Android devices. I have recently found one that is the same as Texture called Readly, which I’m currently loving. I can read all my favorite magazines for one monthly fee, which is awesome.

If reading is important to you, you’ll definitely want to include at least one ebook/magazine subscription in your list.

Services

Another category you might be forgetting are services you pay for on a regular basis. These are things like a car wash membership, massages, preschool or sports programs could even be considered a subscription when you get right down to it.

Obviously this one is completely subjective. Something that is important for one person to pay for, may seem frivolous to another. No judgement on what people decide to spend their money on. If it’s important to you for the cost, then keep paying it. If you think about it, and decide it’s not really needed then you can cancel the subscription for sure.

Subscription Boxes

Another somewhat recent craze is subscription boxes. There are boxes for fashion, STEM, babies, food, and on and on. Anything you are into, you can find a subscription box to go with it. The idea is you pay a monthly fee and the company sends you some products they think you might like. Not all subscription boxes are created equal.

We prefer to do the STEM subscription boxes since I have very particular fashion tastes (read: I love jeans and t-shirts). Some subscription boxes just end up sending you a bunch of samples of products and end up not being worth the month.

Do your research before you sign up for one, and read some unbiased reviews of them. You should be able to weed out the duds.

Gaming

All the major gaming platforms offer (and sometimes almost require to play some games) a subscription to their online services. Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo all have subscriptions you might want to sign up for. If you have multiple gaming systems in your home, you may want to just choose the one that gets used online the most. If you aren’t planning on playing online at all, you should be able to use the system just fine without a subscription though.

It’s really overwhelming how many subscriptions you can be signed up for these days. If you are looking at tightening the budget, the majority of these subscriptions are in the “nice to have” category and can probably be cut from the budget. Maybe pick ONE category and keep a subscription there and get rid of the rest.

Happy choosing!

Family Tech

[ecotone99]

[NF] Autismo

Be me, 11 or so years old.

You've gotten your hands on a computer fan somehow, you're don't remember, but your father doesn't seem to care that you have it for some reason.

You're holding it out of the side of the Truck and it's spinning at an insanely high speed. You love the sound of the "whirrrrrrrRRRRRR^RRRRRRRRR^rrrrrrr" that revs up as you change the angle of entry into the feedback do-nothing electric turbine you invented

You've loved planes ever since your mom helped you make one out of hot glue and cardboard with her when you were 4 years old. You modeled it after something she found on the internet probably, and you flew it down the stairs but it dived because we used too much glue (I'm hard on things, she probably wanted to compensate but didn't know about the rocket science of center of gravity vs center of pressure/propulsion.) You wish you understood why the plane didn't fly like a plane

You see a fly TRAPPED on the dash of the truck because it won't risk flight in this turbulence. you don't know why but you can't imagine what it's like to be a fly since your mom got you a book about flies and other insects that you loved because insects scare you but the pretty book told you which ones are scary and which ones just look scary, so it's okay. Mom is gone now, but she told you lots before Dad started yelling at you every day. It's going to be okay, he tells you that he loves you. You don't have to be scared of the medicines, just look them up on wikipedia and try to understand. Someday you'll realize it wasn't okay and you'll cry even more, but that's okay. right?

The fly is only alive for like 4 days. Sometimes people call it a fly, if there's a bunch of them it's called flies and all you know is that they're bad for food. You don't want them on your food, for some weird reason. The book didn't tell me about that.

I can't see the fly's whole life, but I can imagine it, mostly because the book talked a lot about flies because that makes sense when you see so many flies, that's what you'd want to know about the most so that's what people know the most about.

It's boring to be a fly. You just go, "OH SHIT I'M ALIVE BETTER FIND FOOD", then you master the food thing and you go "F*** B**** GET MONEY" and then you die, like that's the whole thing and it takes like 4 days. No time for questions.

*3.5 years later*

A psychologist with a funny last name sits across from you at a hexagonal picnic bench under a gazebo at the end of a red hexagonal cinder block trail in the courtyard of a nursing home where the smell of cleaning products reminds you of the stuff in the hospital when you watched your dad dying.

He tells you that you're very smart and you should believe in yourself, and that he wants you to understand your own psychology so that you have an understanding of what's going wrong and you can short-circuit the thought into another thought about how that doesn't matter or it's okay, you can just keep going.

But all you want to talk about is what that fly thought about time, you don't know why. What you don't know is WHY. HOW? WHAT? 4 days. You'd rather distract yourself than continue crying and telling a stranger about all the ways and things and times that make you suicidal.

"there's an INDY gene in those flies" he says. "You flip one gene (set/expression/phoneme?) from dominant to recessive and they live for 8 days instead of 4."

You sit there, dumbfounded.

Autismo part II: Redux

be me, 10 years later (24 years old)

You realize that concurrency is not A, but *THE* mental capacity solution to a reduction in time.

You listened to a set of books for fun on the drive to and from your University while you were living with your grandmother, a 45 minuted drive. First, Too Big To Fail, Andrew Sorkin's exhaustive journalistic account of the collateralized-debt-obligation (CDO) securities leverage and insurance, then bubbling and pop-type failure leading up to the week's events in 2008 that cause Lehman, Bear Stern, AIG, and (bank of america, maybe?) into liquidation positions.

You illegally ripped the CDs, not your CDOs, because you're poor. Except you're cash poor because you have $383,000 but your uncle in control hates his life and thinks that's why he works hard. He's a manufacturing infrastructure engineer with a 2 year degree, and that was hard.

So he wants you to hate your life until you get a job too, because that means you'll make a lot of money and be an engineer or something probably. But you already got a job. He made you. He told you that you only get to spend $10 a week on things you don't need unless you get a job and make the money yourself. You like computers and Jobs at the local theme park hurt your back. No good reason, they just want you to stand there to use a computer that you could totally use while sitting down because you're at the end of a buffet and you don't have to touch or move any food.

That job, your love of computers, your family all seem to make you happier and it also makes you ate life even more. At church on Sunday, the Pastor rips into you personally "PORNOGRAPHY IS THE DEVIL", "THINKING ABOUT OTHER THINGS AS IF THEY ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN GOD IS THE DEVIL", "SCIENCE IS EVIL", "PEOPLE WHO QUESTION GOD ARE WORSHIPING SATAN" he shouts through complex analogies that are aimed to keep you from hearing the actual fascism in the words. You're just the idiot savant kid sitting in the back running all of the audio equipment the entire time.

I tried to tell the pastor that he could put the sermons on a format of more dense form like a hard drive in a computer, and back it up to another hard drive, but every few weeks an 8 GB SD card would fill up and we'd just use a new one. THAT'S WRITE, WRITE ONCE, CATALOG DATA IN FLASH STORAGE LIKE A FUCKING NINTENDO, THIS MAN LIVED IN THE DARK AGES IN 2013. Oh, but the kid in the back thinking about how to jail break his iPhone and download the Golden Master release of the first iOS with multitasking, yeah, he's worshiping SATAN by not listening to you repeat the same fear mongering over and over.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God now, my God, not yours, let's not talk about it right now. Yes, pornography is bad, but not why you think, it's because it's actually bad, like, a psychologist can prove it to you. No, thinking about other things isn't the devil, but thinking about how to make a thing or improve on a thing to make yourself like God, well that is, and I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg. Science isn't evil, it's an effort to understand things from first principles that sometimes leads to atomic bombs, that just means that we shouldn't make or use atomic bombs, not "DURR SCIENCE DA DEVIL". And those people questioning God are called lost sheep, great job welcoming them into your church pastor.

Anyway, you got the CDs ripped onto your Android phone and turned in the audio book CDs in time and deleted your copy because you knew there were internet services for libraries to do that and your library just doesn't have one yet. I probably should have told them about that. Your android phone sorted the numbered tracks generated by windows with a slightly out of order algorithm by comparison

You realize numbers are sorted differently by the alphabetic sorting in the file system on an android Samsung Galaxy S3, apparently. I was getting a degree in computer science but couldn't tell this was the case until the end of the book was not the end of the book, the end of the book played and then the book kept playing. The problem is that windows sees "track 1"->"track 2" and Linux (the heart of Android) sees "track 1"->"track 10"->"track 11"->...->"track 2"->"track 20", so it was mostly in order, until the end of the book was track 2 because it wasn't 19 apparently. Stupid fucking sorting algorithms, let's all just agree on standards! Oh wait, you just ignored the RFCs? cool. Let's just use CDs and listen to nothing but the CDs so we can get the audiobooks back on time, I'm not re-writing the Android Kernel. Bon voyage, NPR and news about the baboon running for president!

Then, A biography of Nietzsche by who know which author. His Uber-Mensche (super man) idea of how mankind was rebuilding itself in the imagined image of his "Gods" hardens your heart and doesn't make sense. The idea that you would even want to try sickens you. You just want to understand, not own the world. Screw owning anything, you wanna make things, help people, be someone.

Then, the most audacious pick you could because PBS Space Time on YouTube showed you that you can understand the physics without knowing the math, a book on how string theory works by a guy who actually works on that stuff, way out there past the words and into the Greek symbols for things I don't understand.

Then, I moved to Colorado because I wanted to smoke weed without fearing my record and harassment by the police, and a door opened because tech is a booming market, even in the back room of rinky dink flower shops in a small farming town where you live.

Autismo part II: Redux

be me, 10 years later (24 years old)

You realize that concurrency is not A, but *THE* mental capacity solution to a reduction in time.

You listened to a set of books for fun on the drive to and from your University while you were living with your grandmother, a 45 minuted drive. First, Too Big To Fail, Andrew Sorkin's exhaustive journalistic account of the collateralized-debt-obligation (CDO) securities leverage and insurance, then bubbling and pop-type failure leading up to the week's events in 2008 that cause Lehman, Bear Stern, AIG, and (bank of america, maybe?) into liquidation positions.

You illegally ripped the CDs, not your CDOs, because you're poor. Except you're cash poor because you have $383,000 but your uncle in control hates his life and thinks that's why he works hard. He's a manufacturing infrastructure engineer with a 2 year degree, and that was hard.

So he wants you to hate your life until you get a job too, because that means you'll make a lot of money and be an engineer or something probably. But you already got a job. He made you. He told you that you only get to spend $10 a week on things you don't need unless you get a job and make the money yourself. You like computers and Jobs at the local theme park hurt your back. No good reason, they just want you to stand there to use a computer that you could totally use while sitting down because you're at the end of a buffet and you don't have to touch or move any food.

That job, your love of computers, your family all seem to make you happier and it also makes you ate life even more. At church on Sunday, the Pastor rips into you personally "PORNOGRAPHY IS THE DEVIL", "THINKING ABOUT OTHER THINGS AS IF THEY ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN GOD IS THE DEVIL", "SCIENCE IS EVIL", "PEOPLE WHO QUESTION GOD ARE WORSHIPING SATAN" he shouts through complex analogies that are aimed to keep you from hearing the actual fascism in the words. You're just the idiot savant kid sitting in the back running all of the audio equipment the entire time.

I tried to tell the pastor that he could put the sermons on a format of more dense form like a hard drive in a computer, and back it up to another hard drive, but every few weeks an 8 GB SD card would fill up and we'd just use a new one. THAT'S WRITE, WRITE ONCE, CATALOG DATA IN FLASH STORAGE LIKE A FUCKING NINTENDO, THIS MAN LIVED IN THE DARK AGES IN 2013. Oh, but the kid in the back thinking about how to jail break his iPhone and download the Golden Master release of the first iOS with multitasking, yeah, he's worshiping SATAN by not listening to you repeat the same fear mongering over and over.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God now, my God, not yours, let's not talk about it right now. Yes, pornography is bad, but not why you think, it's because it's actually bad, like, a psychologist can prove it to you. No, thinking about other things isn't the devil, but thinking about how to make a thing or improve on a thing to make yourself like God, well that is, and I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg. Science isn't evil, it's an effort to understand things from first principles that sometimes leads to atomic bombs, that just means that we shouldn't make or use atomic bombs, not "DURR SCIENCE DA DEVIL". And those people questioning God are called lost sheep, great job welcoming them into your church pastor.

Anyway, you got the CDs ripped onto your Android phone and turned in the audio book CDs in time and deleted your copy because you knew there were internet services for libraries to do that and your library just doesn't have one yet. I probably should have told them about that. Your android phone sorted the numbered tracks generated by windows with a slightly out of order algorithm by comparison

You realize numbers are sorted differently by the alphabetic sorting in the file system on an android Samsung Galaxy S3, apparently. I was getting a degree in computer science but couldn't tell this was the case until the end of the book was not the end of the book, the end of the book played and then the book kept playing. The problem is that windows sees "track 1"->"track 2" and Linux (the heart of Android) sees "track 1"->"track 10"->"track 11"->...->"track 2"->"track 20", so it was mostly in order, until the end of the book was track 2 because it wasn't 19 apparently. Stupid fucking sorting algorithms, let's all just agree on standards! Oh wait, you just ignored the RFCs? cool. Let's just use CDs and listen to nothing but the CDs so we can get the audiobooks back on time, I'm not re-writing the Android Kernel. Bon voyage, NPR and news about the baboon running for president!

Then, A biography of Nietzsche by who know which author. His Uber-Mensche (super man) idea of how mankind was rebuilding itself in the imagined image of his "Gods" hardens your heart and doesn't make sense. The idea that you would even want to try sickens you. You just want to understand, not own the world. Screw owning anything, you wanna make things, help people, be someone.

Then, the most audacious pick you could because PBS Space Time on YouTube showed you that you can understand the physics without knowing the math, a book on how string theory works by a guy who actually works on that stuff, way out there past the words and into the Greek symbols for things I don't understand.

Then, I moved to Colorado because I wanted to smoke weed without fearing my record and harassment by the police, and a door opened because tech is a booming market, even in the back room of rinky dink flower shops in a small farming town where you live.

submitted by /u/AspiENTP [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3c3XwuQ

[daniellethamasa]

Hey all, Dani here.

Sorry for my supremely late post yesterday. Damian decided that it would be a great and worthwhile idea to drive straight from work down to Cincinnati for Felicia Day’s book signing. And okay, yes, it was totally worth it, but we are now both running on about 4 hours of sleep, which is a teeny bit frustrating. It’s all good though. It was great for me to get to see Felicia again, and Damian got to meet her for the first time. Oh, and naturally we bought some books. Because what else do you do when you go to a bookstore?

First up, watches. We have made it to the middle of “Avatar: the Last Airbender” Book Three: Fire, so that’s fun. Oh, and we also went to our local drive-in movie theater for their final weekend of operation this season and saw a double feature of “Abominable” ad “Hobbs & Shaw.” That was a lot of fun.

Oh, and I guess I should talk about what I’m playing too. I have a Nintendo Switch Lite and I am currently playing the re-release of Link’s Awakening. I am having so much fun with it, and I’ve gotten farther than I ever did when I played it on GameBoy when I was a kid, so that’s pretty great. I’m also sort of casually playing Skyrim on my Switch as well, but my main focus at the moment is Link.

Okay, now let’s talk about books. Since last week I have finished Five Dark Fates, and I also read Frankly in Love. I’m pretty close to finishing The Girl the Sea Gave Back, so I’ll go ahead and include that here as well.

I’m still listening to Teleworld. I have about 6 hours left in the audiobook and I am so enjoying this rereading adventure. I am also currently reading Song of Blood & Stone, which is pretty interesting. And I am working my way through Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity.

As for what I’m planning to read next, my reading plans just got thrown for a loop because Rachel E Kelly has sent me the next installment in the Colorworld series for copy editing, so I’m diving into Waterworld Volume 3: Xavier next. Sorry, I am unable to post a photo for my upcoming read’s cover; I don’t have the cover image yet, but I’ll likely have a cover reveal and/or review up before release time, so it’ll be okay in the end. After that I don’t know. But Damian and I are planning to have a lazy weekend of relaxing and reading this weekend, so I’ll probably end up reading some other books as well.

One of these might be my next read. I don’t entirely know yet. So, I guess we’ll all know when I get around to my weekly wrap-up next week, right?

I guess I should also say that I’m starting the process to plan out how I’m going to handle this blog in the month of November. I’ve been doing so good with posting regular content and I don’t want to just abandon that, but I definitely do want to focus myself on my writing project for NaNoWriMo. So I may try and prep up a bunch of the manga and book reviews that I’ve had listed in my blogging notebook for a few months now, because I know I should be able to get those ready to go (I hope). I guess it depends on how the next couple of weeks go.

So what have you been doing and/or reading lately? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.

Weekly Wrap Up (34) Hey all, Dani here. Sorry for my supremely late post yesterday. Damian decided that it would be a great and worthwhile idea to drive straight from work down to Cincinnati for Felicia Day's book signing.

[joshuabradleyn]

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life

“Taaaaaaaaake onnnnnnnn me,

Taaaaaaaake meeeeee on!

I’ll beeeeeeee goonnnnnnne,

In a day or TWOOOOOOO!”

What the hell does that mean? Who cares!

All I know is that I can’t get a-ha’s “Take on Me” out of my head. It’s been there ever since the trailer dropped for the nerdy nostalgia-bomb that is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” a blockbuster movie out now, based on the best-selling book of the same name:

As a child of the Oregon Trail generation[1], I thoroughly enjoyed all of the pop culture and nerd references throughout the novel and could certainly relate to the main character Wade Watts, an overweight awkward teenager who loves 80’s pop culture and escapes a crappy existence by spending most of his time in virtual worlds.

It had me thinking deeply about how technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives, in both good ways and bad.

We can’t not check our email every 3 seconds. We can’t stop watching Netflix. We can’t stop scrolling through photos on Instagram. We can’t sit through a conversation with a person in front of us without habitually checking our phone every time it buzzes.

And then we all wonder why we are too busy, distracted, unhealthy, unhappy, and can’t get our shit together.

These days, it’s becoming more and more commonplace to use technology for convenience and quick bouts of entertainment and happiness to shield us from the reality that there are parts of our lives or our health we’re unhappy with.

In Ready Player One, we get a very plausible look into a dystopian future where those societal trends have continued: technology gets better and more convenient, and people spend more and more time escaping into more exciting virtual lives online.

And society has nearly collapsed as a result.

Although this book is partly a cautionary tale about where we’re heading if we don’t change our behavior, it’s also a charming Hero’s Journey, deep fried in neon-tinted nostalgia, that I couldn’t put down.

As a gamer who thinks about life like a game (and even wrote a book about this very idea), every page of this book had me grinning from ear to ear.

Today I want to quickly discuss the pitfalls of technology and then share my 10 favorite ways to use technology to get ourselves to actually do the stuff that matters every day.

This is Nerd Fitness, after all.

So…ready, player one?

Why Ready Player ONe Matters

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.

Technology has allowed me to create Nerd Fitness and deliver this article to you. It’s changed my life decidedly for the better and made literally everything easier.

The problem comes when technology gets TOO damn good. Video games are getting TOO well designed and addicting. TV shows and the delivery of those shows is so well done that you can lose an entire Saturday to 10 episodes in a row of Stranger Things before you realize it. Social media can be TOO pervasive, causing us to cast aside real life friendships and deep conversation in instead spend our time virtually – and superficially – connecting with people.

We trade likes and thumbs up in this unwritten but very real economy of fluffing each other’s egos.

If you’ve read any of the recent studies on this stuff, you know that social media is actually making us unhappier and more anxious[2], and yet we can’t get ourselves to stop seeking “just another hit.”

It’s getting easier and easier to say “one more level” or “I’ll just check Instagram quickly” and 10-15 minutes of your life is lost in a black hole of junk-food style entertainment.

And this causes us to forgo what is ACTUALLY important in our lives: Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Practicing self-care. Getting enough sleep. Connecting with people in real life. [3]

Which brings me back to Ready Player One.

If you haven’t read the book or don’t plan on seeing the movie, how did you end up on Nerd Fitness allow me to quickly explain the premise:

The year is 2045, and technology has advanced dramatically while the rest of society has devolved. Our main character Wade Watts is an overweight, awkward high school senior with little money to his name.

Every day, Wade puts on a virtual reality headset to plug into The OASIS, a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) – think Second Life or World of Warcraft on steroids. OASIS has become so successful that its something pretty much everybody on the planet now uses.

In the OASIS, Wade attends school, hangs out with friends, and gets to create this alternate life for himself. Depending on how much in-game currency you have, you can visit various worlds, level up your character by completing quests, and make a life for yourself.

For most people, life in the OASIS kicks the crap out of their miserable real life, which means they use this second life as an escape from the harsh reality. And the more time they spend in game, the more they neglect their real-life health happiness, which further perpetuates a negative downward spiral.

So how does one stop letting the Matrix run their lives and instead take control back?

Let’s see what Wade did.

Wade Gets in Shape to Level Up His Life

Wade’s in a not-so-great place.

He lives in isolation, is very unhappy with his physical appearance, struggles socially, and chooses to withdraw more and more into an anonymous character online that’s much more exciting than his real world counterpart.

This is already happening today, with people losing their jobs, relationships, families, and even their lives due to online gaming or technology addictions.

Fortunately, Wade did something that was so freaking smart and clever that gets the 100% Nerd FItness Stamp of Approval.

[Note to self: buy stamp of approval.]

At a turning point in the story, Wade makes a decision that probably seemed small at the time but forever altered his life’s path. He turned on the voluntary Fitness Lockout protocol of the OASIS. This meant that every day, Wade had his biometrics tracked, and rigged his system so that he was locked out of using the OASIS until he got enough physical activity every day.

What this means: Wade used technology to make his life decidedly better instead of making it worse. He was so addicted to using the OASIS that he needed to be in there. Which meant if he wanted to play, he had only ONE path to connection:

Doing the damn exercise!

Unsurprisingly, this changed Wade’s negative downward spiral into a positive virtuous cycle. Getting all that exercise started to make him feel better about himself and gave him more energy. He got hooked on how he felt after exercise and how much more pride he felt looking in the mirror. In other words, it felt like he had regained control, and this caused him to want to continue to chase that feeling.

Wade was smart enough to build a system that forced himself to do what was best for him, and stuck with it long enough until that activity because his new default behavior.

Depending on where you’re at in your fitness journey, this might sound like a pipe dream. However, I can tell you that there’s one common thread in every one of our success stories – whether it’s single moms or opera-singing IT professionals, they all say the same thing:

“I don’t know how it happened, but somehow…I now actually look forward to exercising.”

Here’s how you can be like Wade.

10 Ways to Make Technology Work For You

I don’t believe technology is inherently good or bad.

It’s a tool that can be used to improve or harm our lives. Oftentimes, a little bit is good, a lot is detrimental.

Inspired by Ready Player One, I wanted to go through some ways I’ve implemented technological hurdles in my life to actually make my life LESS convenient. I’m using it to keep me from devolving too far down rabbit holes of gaming, Netflix, and instead just do the damn things I need to do every day to make my life better.

Here are my favorite examples:

1) I WANT TO EXERCISE MORE AND WATCH LESS NETFLIX:

Although we can’t do EXACTLY what Wade did in Ready Player One, we can emulate it pretty closely. For example, give your spouse/friend/roommate/coworker your login credentials to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Have them change the password and not tell you.

Only after you do the thing you’ve agreed to do that day (send them a photo of you at the gym) will they give you the password.

2) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO GO TO THE GYM ENOUGH:

Do temptation bundling. Download your favorite audiobook or your favorite shows on Netflix. ONLY allow yourself to watch/listen to these while you’re walking on a treadmill at the gym or exercising.

How to do this? Download the shows to your iPad. Next time you to go to gym, ask the general manager to set the password on your iPad so that he’s the only one that can unlock it. If you want to watch the show, they’ll have to let you in!

3) I WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

I know there’s a big movement to #deleteFacebook right now, but we use Facebook to connect with members of the community and our products and services. But I know everytime I go to Facebook for work reasons, I end up scrolling through my newsfeed for 10-15 min and I get VERY little out of it.

So I use tech to my advantage. In addition to deleting social media off my phone, I turned off my newsfeed. If you use Google Chrome, install newsfeed eradicator. Now my time spent on Facebook is minimal, the distraction is gone, and I can still connect with people when it fits my life. This is what I see when I sign into Facebook:

BORING. I might as well get back to work!

My friend Sol has given his facebook password to his girlfriend and makes sure he isn’t logged in on any of his computers. So he only uses it when it fits into his schedule. There’s no compulsive checking during the day.

4) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO PLAY FEWER VIDEO GAMES:

Be your own parent! I have installed parental controls on my Nintendo Switch and PS4. It locks the system during certain hours, or I can limit myself to playing only during a certain number of hours. When you’re in the right mindset, install these controls and have somebody else set your passwords so you can’t just turn it off.

Stop relying on willpower – these games are too damn good. I’m currently hooked on Assassin’s Creed: Origins and the struggle is real. I imagine if I even took one hit of Fortnite I’d be mainlining battle royales all the way to rehab by next Tuesday.

5) I WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER:

Hat tip to my friend Thomas Frank on this one. Schedule a really embarrassing tweet/photo to publish 5 min after you need to wake up, and put your phone across the room. You have to wake up, walk across the room, and stop the scheduled tweet from sending. WAYYYY more effective than an alarm clock you can just snooze!

6) I WANT TO STOP EATING FAST FOOD:

Leave your ATM debit card at home, and only bring a credit card with you to work, preferably one that you share with your spouse. Have them receive an email notification for every time the card is used. And if it is used at a fast food restaurant, they’ll donate $50 you gave them to a cause you hate.

7) I CAN’T GET MY KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES: 

Be like this awesome mom:

8) I WANT TO MOVE MORE EVERY DAY:

Get yourself a cheap fitbit (I have a Flex 2 and LOVE it for sleep tracking purposes, but also interesting to see my step count). Take somebody you trust, and friend them on Fitbit’s platform. Then, agree to an amount of steps you need to take every day before you can watch TV, play video games, etc. If you don’t reach said steps before you slack off for the day, they will post a super embarrassing photo that you’ve sent them on social media.

9) I WANT TO COOK HEALTHIER MEALS:

Throw all of the junk food out of your house. Instead of using Amazon Prime to just deliver you useless crap you don’t need, have it set to auto-deliver you fresh groceries or meal kits regularly. Use technology and convenience to your advantage and make the most convenient option the healthiest one. Once you eliminate fast food, junk food, and crap you don’t need to buy, you can increase your food budget to compensate for the increased of convenience here.

You can also set up a mission with friends where you have to batch cook your meals on Sunday (how to batch cook here). If you don’t cook your meals on Sunday, no Netflix that week (your friend would have the password), and vice versa. Diabolical. Effective.

10) I LOOK AT MY DAMN PHONE TOO MUCH:

Change your phone to greyscale. Suddenly everything is way less vibrant and fun and the phone starts to lose its appeal. Turn on parental controls on your phone, have somebody else set your parental lock password, and delete all unnecessary apps from your phone – email, social media, YouTube, etc. Tough to get distracted by a device that doesn’t have anything fun to do on it, right?

Instead, have a real life conversation, even with a stranger! Read a damn book!

Maybe Ready Player One! Maybe THIS one 🙂

Or if you’re looking for some free literature to help change your life, you can join The NF Rebellion and download a plethora (I don’t get to use that word enough) of free ebooks as our way of welcoming you to our community!

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

Use Technology to Change Your Default Behavior

We’re creatures of habit, and products of our environment. If we’re not intentional with our time, our default behavior becomes:

Netflix and ice cream after work instead of hitting the gym.

Gaming late into the night instead of getting quality sleep.

Fast food instead of taking the time to batch-cook our meals for the week.

When we don’t take control, we give that control subconsciously to what’s most convenient. And technology will gladly take that control from you, because every company’s stock price and profit margin depend on it.

These are companies with tens of thousands of employees, scientists, psychologists, and billions of dollars of research at their disposal and their only goal is to get more of your attention/time/focus/money.

Sure, you can lament the fact that you don’t have enough willpower or motivation or whatever to avoid all of these temptations to do the boring, challenging activity that will dramatically improve your life in the long term.

You can EITHER:

Beat yourself up for what you THINK you should be doing but can’t.

Accept that this is reality, and that you need to stop relying on yourself and instead start relying on systems.

I mean this in a good way, but I gave up on myself a long time ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. Because games and social media and TV are too enjoyable! So I don’t even give myself the option to get tempted by this stuff by using technology to my benefit.

So be more like Wade Watts and build systems in your life and use the Matrix to your advantage.

YOUR TURN:

Which tech hack is your favorite for getting you to make healthier decisions daily?

Do you have a strategy that you’ve put in place to level up your own life?

Share them in the comments below and help your fellow nerds out!

And then go read/see Ready Player One 🙂

-Steve

###

photo credit: Profound Whatever 8-bit Basement, jjackowski, Safety Protocols Disabled, JD Hancock Wocka Wocka Wocka!,

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

People who grew up without social media, who had their first interaction with computers be in computer labs at school playing Oregon Trail: The Oregon Trail Generation

Social Media is making us more anxious: study

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s thoughts in this space in his fantastic book, Deep Work.

https://ift.tt/2GJeAJA

[almajonesnjna]

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life

“Taaaaaaaaake onnnnnnnn me,

Taaaaaaaake meeeeee on!

I’ll beeeeeeee goonnnnnnne,

In a day or TWOOOOOOO!”

What the hell does that mean? Who cares!

All I know is that I can’t get a-ha’s “Take on Me” out of my head. It’s been there ever since the trailer dropped for the nerdy nostalgia-bomb that is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” a blockbuster movie out now, based on the best-selling book of the same name:

As a child of the Oregon Trail generation[1], I thoroughly enjoyed all of the pop culture and nerd references throughout the novel and could certainly relate to the main character Wade Watts, an overweight awkward teenager who loves 80’s pop culture and escapes a crappy existence by spending most of his time in virtual worlds.

It had me thinking deeply about how technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives, in both good ways and bad.

We can’t not check our email every 3 seconds. We can’t stop watching Netflix. We can’t stop scrolling through photos on Instagram. We can’t sit through a conversation with a person in front of us without habitually checking our phone every time it buzzes.

And then we all wonder why we are too busy, distracted, unhealthy, unhappy, and can’t get our shit together.

These days, it’s becoming more and more commonplace to use technology for convenience and quick bouts of entertainment and happiness to shield us from the reality that there are parts of our lives or our health we’re unhappy with.

In Ready Player One, we get a very plausible look into a dystopian future where those societal trends have continued: technology gets better and more convenient, and people spend more and more time escaping into more exciting virtual lives online.

And society has nearly collapsed as a result.

Although this book is partly a cautionary tale about where we’re heading if we don’t change our behavior, it’s also a charming Hero’s Journey, deep fried in neon-tinted nostalgia, that I couldn’t put down.

As a gamer who thinks about life like a game (and even wrote a book about this very idea), every page of this book had me grinning from ear to ear.

Today I want to quickly discuss the pitfalls of technology and then share my 10 favorite ways to use technology to get ourselves to actually do the stuff that matters every day.

This is Nerd Fitness, after all.

So…ready, player one?

Why Ready Player ONe Matters

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.

Technology has allowed me to create Nerd Fitness and deliver this article to you. It’s changed my life decidedly for the better and made literally everything easier.

The problem comes when technology gets TOO damn good. Video games are getting TOO well designed and addicting. TV shows and the delivery of those shows is so well done that you can lose an entire Saturday to 10 episodes in a row of Stranger Things before you realize it. Social media can be TOO pervasive, causing us to cast aside real life friendships and deep conversation in instead spend our time virtually – and superficially – connecting with people.

We trade likes and thumbs up in this unwritten but very real economy of fluffing each other’s egos.

If you’ve read any of the recent studies on this stuff, you know that social media is actually making us unhappier and more anxious[2], and yet we can’t get ourselves to stop seeking “just another hit.”

It’s getting easier and easier to say “one more level” or “I’ll just check Instagram quickly” and 10-15 minutes of your life is lost in a black hole of junk-food style entertainment.

And this causes us to forgo what is ACTUALLY important in our lives: Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Practicing self-care. Getting enough sleep. Connecting with people in real life. [3]

Which brings me back to Ready Player One.

If you haven’t read the book or don’t plan on seeing the movie, how did you end up on Nerd Fitness allow me to quickly explain the premise:

The year is 2045, and technology has advanced dramatically while the rest of society has devolved. Our main character Wade Watts is an overweight, awkward high school senior with little money to his name.

Every day, Wade puts on a virtual reality headset to plug into The OASIS, a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) – think Second Life or World of Warcraft on steroids. OASIS has become so successful that its something pretty much everybody on the planet now uses.

In the OASIS, Wade attends school, hangs out with friends, and gets to create this alternate life for himself. Depending on how much in-game currency you have, you can visit various worlds, level up your character by completing quests, and make a life for yourself.

For most people, life in the OASIS kicks the crap out of their miserable real life, which means they use this second life as an escape from the harsh reality. And the more time they spend in game, the more they neglect their real-life health happiness, which further perpetuates a negative downward spiral.

So how does one stop letting the Matrix run their lives and instead take control back?

Let’s see what Wade did.

Wade Gets in Shape to Level Up His Life

Wade’s in a not-so-great place.

He lives in isolation, is very unhappy with his physical appearance, struggles socially, and chooses to withdraw more and more into an anonymous character online that’s much more exciting than his real world counterpart.

This is already happening today, with people losing their jobs, relationships, families, and even their lives due to online gaming or technology addictions.

Fortunately, Wade did something that was so freaking smart and clever that gets the 100% Nerd FItness Stamp of Approval.

[Note to self: buy stamp of approval.]

At a turning point in the story, Wade makes a decision that probably seemed small at the time but forever altered his life’s path. He turned on the voluntary Fitness Lockout protocol of the OASIS. This meant that every day, Wade had his biometrics tracked, and rigged his system so that he was locked out of using the OASIS until he got enough physical activity every day.

What this means: Wade used technology to make his life decidedly better instead of making it worse. He was so addicted to using the OASIS that he needed to be in there. Which meant if he wanted to play, he had only ONE path to connection:

Doing the damn exercise!

Unsurprisingly, this changed Wade’s negative downward spiral into a positive virtuous cycle. Getting all that exercise started to make him feel better about himself and gave him more energy. He got hooked on how he felt after exercise and how much more pride he felt looking in the mirror. In other words, it felt like he had regained control, and this caused him to want to continue to chase that feeling.

Wade was smart enough to build a system that forced himself to do what was best for him, and stuck with it long enough until that activity because his new default behavior.

Depending on where you’re at in your fitness journey, this might sound like a pipe dream. However, I can tell you that there’s one common thread in every one of our success stories – whether it’s single moms or opera-singing IT professionals, they all say the same thing:

“I don’t know how it happened, but somehow…I now actually look forward to exercising.”

Here’s how you can be like Wade.

10 Ways to Make Technology Work For You

I don’t believe technology is inherently good or bad.

It’s a tool that can be used to improve or harm our lives. Oftentimes, a little bit is good, a lot is detrimental.

Inspired by Ready Player One, I wanted to go through some ways I’ve implemented technological hurdles in my life to actually make my life LESS convenient. I’m using it to keep me from devolving too far down rabbit holes of gaming, Netflix, and instead just do the damn things I need to do every day to make my life better.

Here are my favorite examples:

1) I WANT TO EXERCISE MORE AND WATCH LESS NETFLIX:

Although we can’t do EXACTLY what Wade did in Ready Player One, we can emulate it pretty closely. For example, give your spouse/friend/roommate/coworker your login credentials to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Have them change the password and not tell you.

Only after you do the thing you’ve agreed to do that day (send them a photo of you at the gym) will they give you the password.

2) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO GO TO THE GYM ENOUGH:

Do temptation bundling. Download your favorite audiobook or your favorite shows on Netflix. ONLY allow yourself to watch/listen to these while you’re walking on a treadmill at the gym or exercising.

How to do this? Download the shows to your iPad. Next time you to go to gym, ask the general manager to set the password on your iPad so that he’s the only one that can unlock it. If you want to watch the show, they’ll have to let you in!

3) I WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

I know there’s a big movement to #deleteFacebook right now, but we use Facebook to connect with members of the community and our products and services. But I know everytime I go to Facebook for work reasons, I end up scrolling through my newsfeed for 10-15 min and I get VERY little out of it.

So I use tech to my advantage. In addition to deleting social media off my phone, I turned off my newsfeed. If you use Google Chrome, install newsfeed eradicator. Now my time spent on Facebook is minimal, the distraction is gone, and I can still connect with people when it fits my life. This is what I see when I sign into Facebook:

BORING. I might as well get back to work!

My friend Sol has given his facebook password to his girlfriend and makes sure he isn’t logged in on any of his computers. So he only uses it when it fits into his schedule. There’s no compulsive checking during the day.

4) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO PLAY FEWER VIDEO GAMES:

Be your own parent! I have installed parental controls on my Nintendo Switch and PS4. It locks the system during certain hours, or I can limit myself to playing only during a certain number of hours. When you’re in the right mindset, install these controls and have somebody else set your passwords so you can’t just turn it off.

Stop relying on willpower – these games are too damn good. I’m currently hooked on Assassin’s Creed: Origins and the struggle is real. I imagine if I even took one hit of Fortnite I’d be mainlining battle royales all the way to rehab by next Tuesday.

5) I WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER:

Hat tip to my friend Thomas Frank on this one. Schedule a really embarrassing tweet/photo to publish 5 min after you need to wake up, and put your phone across the room. You have to wake up, walk across the room, and stop the scheduled tweet from sending. WAYYYY more effective than an alarm clock you can just snooze!

6) I WANT TO STOP EATING FAST FOOD:

Leave your ATM debit card at home, and only bring a credit card with you to work, preferably one that you share with your spouse. Have them receive an email notification for every time the card is used. And if it is used at a fast food restaurant, they’ll donate $50 you gave them to a cause you hate.

7) I CAN’T GET MY KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES: 

Be like this awesome mom:

8) I WANT TO MOVE MORE EVERY DAY:

Get yourself a cheap fitbit (I have a Flex 2 and LOVE it for sleep tracking purposes, but also interesting to see my step count). Take somebody you trust, and friend them on Fitbit’s platform. Then, agree to an amount of steps you need to take every day before you can watch TV, play video games, etc. If you don’t reach said steps before you slack off for the day, they will post a super embarrassing photo that you’ve sent them on social media.

9) I WANT TO COOK HEALTHIER MEALS:

Throw all of the junk food out of your house. Instead of using Amazon Prime to just deliver you useless crap you don’t need, have it set to auto-deliver you fresh groceries or meal kits regularly. Use technology and convenience to your advantage and make the most convenient option the healthiest one. Once you eliminate fast food, junk food, and crap you don’t need to buy, you can increase your food budget to compensate for the increased of convenience here.

You can also set up a mission with friends where you have to batch cook your meals on Sunday (how to batch cook here). If you don’t cook your meals on Sunday, no Netflix that week (your friend would have the password), and vice versa. Diabolical. Effective.

10) I LOOK AT MY DAMN PHONE TOO MUCH:

Change your phone to greyscale. Suddenly everything is way less vibrant and fun and the phone starts to lose its appeal. Turn on parental controls on your phone, have somebody else set your parental lock password, and delete all unnecessary apps from your phone – email, social media, YouTube, etc. Tough to get distracted by a device that doesn’t have anything fun to do on it, right?

Instead, have a real life conversation, even with a stranger! Read a damn book!

Maybe Ready Player One! Maybe THIS one 🙂

Or if you’re looking for some free literature to help change your life, you can join The NF Rebellion and download a plethora (I don’t get to use that word enough) of free ebooks as our way of welcoming you to our community!

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

Use Technology to Change Your Default Behavior

We’re creatures of habit, and products of our environment. If we’re not intentional with our time, our default behavior becomes:

Netflix and ice cream after work instead of hitting the gym.

Gaming late into the night instead of getting quality sleep.

Fast food instead of taking the time to batch-cook our meals for the week.

When we don’t take control, we give that control subconsciously to what’s most convenient. And technology will gladly take that control from you, because every company’s stock price and profit margin depend on it.

These are companies with tens of thousands of employees, scientists, psychologists, and billions of dollars of research at their disposal and their only goal is to get more of your attention/time/focus/money.

Sure, you can lament the fact that you don’t have enough willpower or motivation or whatever to avoid all of these temptations to do the boring, challenging activity that will dramatically improve your life in the long term.

You can EITHER:

Beat yourself up for what you THINK you should be doing but can’t.

Accept that this is reality, and that you need to stop relying on yourself and instead start relying on systems.

I mean this in a good way, but I gave up on myself a long time ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. Because games and social media and TV are too enjoyable! So I don’t even give myself the option to get tempted by this stuff by using technology to my benefit.

So be more like Wade Watts and build systems in your life and use the Matrix to your advantage.

YOUR TURN:

Which tech hack is your favorite for getting you to make healthier decisions daily?

Do you have a strategy that you’ve put in place to level up your own life?

Share them in the comments below and help your fellow nerds out!

And then go read/see Ready Player One 🙂

-Steve

###

photo credit: Profound Whatever 8-bit Basement, jjackowski, Safety Protocols Disabled, JD Hancock Wocka Wocka Wocka!,

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

People who grew up without social media, who had their first interaction with computers be in computer labs at school playing Oregon Trail: The Oregon Trail Generation

Social Media is making us more anxious: study

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s thoughts in this space in his fantastic book, Deep Work.

https://ift.tt/2GJeAJA

[albertcaldwellne]

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life

“Taaaaaaaaake onnnnnnnn me,

Taaaaaaaake meeeeee on!

I’ll beeeeeeee goonnnnnnne,

In a day or TWOOOOOOO!”

What the hell does that mean? Who cares!

All I know is that I can’t get a-ha’s “Take on Me” out of my head. It’s been there ever since the trailer dropped for the nerdy nostalgia-bomb that is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” a blockbuster movie out now, based on the best-selling book of the same name:

As a child of the Oregon Trail generation[1], I thoroughly enjoyed all of the pop culture and nerd references throughout the novel and could certainly relate to the main character Wade Watts, an overweight awkward teenager who loves 80’s pop culture and escapes a crappy existence by spending most of his time in virtual worlds.

It had me thinking deeply about how technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives, in both good ways and bad.

We can’t not check our email every 3 seconds. We can’t stop watching Netflix. We can’t stop scrolling through photos on Instagram. We can’t sit through a conversation with a person in front of us without habitually checking our phone every time it buzzes.

And then we all wonder why we are too busy, distracted, unhealthy, unhappy, and can’t get our shit together.

These days, it’s becoming more and more commonplace to use technology for convenience and quick bouts of entertainment and happiness to shield us from the reality that there are parts of our lives or our health we’re unhappy with.

In Ready Player One, we get a very plausible look into a dystopian future where those societal trends have continued: technology gets better and more convenient, and people spend more and more time escaping into more exciting virtual lives online.

And society has nearly collapsed as a result.

Although this book is partly a cautionary tale about where we’re heading if we don’t change our behavior, it’s also a charming Hero’s Journey, deep fried in neon-tinted nostalgia, that I couldn’t put down.

As a gamer who thinks about life like a game (and even wrote a book about this very idea), every page of this book had me grinning from ear to ear.

Today I want to quickly discuss the pitfalls of technology and then share my 10 favorite ways to use technology to get ourselves to actually do the stuff that matters every day.

This is Nerd Fitness, after all.

So…ready, player one?

Why Ready Player ONe Matters

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.

Technology has allowed me to create Nerd Fitness and deliver this article to you. It’s changed my life decidedly for the better and made literally everything easier.

The problem comes when technology gets TOO damn good. Video games are getting TOO well designed and addicting. TV shows and the delivery of those shows is so well done that you can lose an entire Saturday to 10 episodes in a row of Stranger Things before you realize it. Social media can be TOO pervasive, causing us to cast aside real life friendships and deep conversation in instead spend our time virtually – and superficially – connecting with people.

We trade likes and thumbs up in this unwritten but very real economy of fluffing each other’s egos.

If you’ve read any of the recent studies on this stuff, you know that social media is actually making us unhappier and more anxious[2], and yet we can’t get ourselves to stop seeking “just another hit.”

It’s getting easier and easier to say “one more level” or “I’ll just check Instagram quickly” and 10-15 minutes of your life is lost in a black hole of junk-food style entertainment.

And this causes us to forgo what is ACTUALLY important in our lives: Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Practicing self-care. Getting enough sleep. Connecting with people in real life. [3]

Which brings me back to Ready Player One.

If you haven’t read the book or don’t plan on seeing the movie, how did you end up on Nerd Fitness allow me to quickly explain the premise:

The year is 2045, and technology has advanced dramatically while the rest of society has devolved. Our main character Wade Watts is an overweight, awkward high school senior with little money to his name.

Every day, Wade puts on a virtual reality headset to plug into The OASIS, a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) – think Second Life or World of Warcraft on steroids. OASIS has become so successful that its something pretty much everybody on the planet now uses.

In the OASIS, Wade attends school, hangs out with friends, and gets to create this alternate life for himself. Depending on how much in-game currency you have, you can visit various worlds, level up your character by completing quests, and make a life for yourself.

For most people, life in the OASIS kicks the crap out of their miserable real life, which means they use this second life as an escape from the harsh reality. And the more time they spend in game, the more they neglect their real-life health happiness, which further perpetuates a negative downward spiral.

So how does one stop letting the Matrix run their lives and instead take control back?

Let’s see what Wade did.

Wade Gets in Shape to Level Up His Life

Wade’s in a not-so-great place.

He lives in isolation, is very unhappy with his physical appearance, struggles socially, and chooses to withdraw more and more into an anonymous character online that’s much more exciting than his real world counterpart.

This is already happening today, with people losing their jobs, relationships, families, and even their lives due to online gaming or technology addictions.

Fortunately, Wade did something that was so freaking smart and clever that gets the 100% Nerd FItness Stamp of Approval.

[Note to self: buy stamp of approval.]

At a turning point in the story, Wade makes a decision that probably seemed small at the time but forever altered his life’s path. He turned on the voluntary Fitness Lockout protocol of the OASIS. This meant that every day, Wade had his biometrics tracked, and rigged his system so that he was locked out of using the OASIS until he got enough physical activity every day.

What this means: Wade used technology to make his life decidedly better instead of making it worse. He was so addicted to using the OASIS that he needed to be in there. Which meant if he wanted to play, he had only ONE path to connection:

Doing the damn exercise!

Unsurprisingly, this changed Wade’s negative downward spiral into a positive virtuous cycle. Getting all that exercise started to make him feel better about himself and gave him more energy. He got hooked on how he felt after exercise and how much more pride he felt looking in the mirror. In other words, it felt like he had regained control, and this caused him to want to continue to chase that feeling.

Wade was smart enough to build a system that forced himself to do what was best for him, and stuck with it long enough until that activity because his new default behavior.

Depending on where you’re at in your fitness journey, this might sound like a pipe dream. However, I can tell you that there’s one common thread in every one of our success stories – whether it’s single moms or opera-singing IT professionals, they all say the same thing:

“I don’t know how it happened, but somehow…I now actually look forward to exercising.”

Here’s how you can be like Wade.

10 Ways to Make Technology Work For You

I don’t believe technology is inherently good or bad.

It’s a tool that can be used to improve or harm our lives. Oftentimes, a little bit is good, a lot is detrimental.

Inspired by Ready Player One, I wanted to go through some ways I’ve implemented technological hurdles in my life to actually make my life LESS convenient. I’m using it to keep me from devolving too far down rabbit holes of gaming, Netflix, and instead just do the damn things I need to do every day to make my life better.

Here are my favorite examples:

1) I WANT TO EXERCISE MORE AND WATCH LESS NETFLIX:

Although we can’t do EXACTLY what Wade did in Ready Player One, we can emulate it pretty closely. For example, give your spouse/friend/roommate/coworker your login credentials to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Have them change the password and not tell you.

Only after you do the thing you’ve agreed to do that day (send them a photo of you at the gym) will they give you the password.

2) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO GO TO THE GYM ENOUGH:

Do temptation bundling. Download your favorite audiobook or your favorite shows on Netflix. ONLY allow yourself to watch/listen to these while you’re walking on a treadmill at the gym or exercising.

How to do this? Download the shows to your iPad. Next time you to go to gym, ask the general manager to set the password on your iPad so that he’s the only one that can unlock it. If you want to watch the show, they’ll have to let you in!

3) I WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

I know there’s a big movement to #deleteFacebook right now, but we use Facebook to connect with members of the community and our products and services. But I know everytime I go to Facebook for work reasons, I end up scrolling through my newsfeed for 10-15 min and I get VERY little out of it.

So I use tech to my advantage. In addition to deleting social media off my phone, I turned off my newsfeed. If you use Google Chrome, install newsfeed eradicator. Now my time spent on Facebook is minimal, the distraction is gone, and I can still connect with people when it fits my life. This is what I see when I sign into Facebook:

BORING. I might as well get back to work!

My friend Sol has given his facebook password to his girlfriend and makes sure he isn’t logged in on any of his computers. So he only uses it when it fits into his schedule. There’s no compulsive checking during the day.

4) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO PLAY FEWER VIDEO GAMES:

Be your own parent! I have installed parental controls on my Nintendo Switch and PS4. It locks the system during certain hours, or I can limit myself to playing only during a certain number of hours. When you’re in the right mindset, install these controls and have somebody else set your passwords so you can’t just turn it off.

Stop relying on willpower – these games are too damn good. I’m currently hooked on Assassin’s Creed: Origins and the struggle is real. I imagine if I even took one hit of Fortnite I’d be mainlining battle royales all the way to rehab by next Tuesday.

5) I WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER:

Hat tip to my friend Thomas Frank on this one. Schedule a really embarrassing tweet/photo to publish 5 min after you need to wake up, and put your phone across the room. You have to wake up, walk across the room, and stop the scheduled tweet from sending. WAYYYY more effective than an alarm clock you can just snooze!

6) I WANT TO STOP EATING FAST FOOD:

Leave your ATM debit card at home, and only bring a credit card with you to work, preferably one that you share with your spouse. Have them receive an email notification for every time the card is used. And if it is used at a fast food restaurant, they’ll donate $50 you gave them to a cause you hate.

7) I CAN’T GET MY KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES: 

Be like this awesome mom:

8) I WANT TO MOVE MORE EVERY DAY:

Get yourself a cheap fitbit (I have a Flex 2 and LOVE it for sleep tracking purposes, but also interesting to see my step count). Take somebody you trust, and friend them on Fitbit’s platform. Then, agree to an amount of steps you need to take every day before you can watch TV, play video games, etc. If you don’t reach said steps before you slack off for the day, they will post a super embarrassing photo that you’ve sent them on social media.

9) I WANT TO COOK HEALTHIER MEALS:

Throw all of the junk food out of your house. Instead of using Amazon Prime to just deliver you useless crap you don’t need, have it set to auto-deliver you fresh groceries or meal kits regularly. Use technology and convenience to your advantage and make the most convenient option the healthiest one. Once you eliminate fast food, junk food, and crap you don’t need to buy, you can increase your food budget to compensate for the increased of convenience here.

You can also set up a mission with friends where you have to batch cook your meals on Sunday (how to batch cook here). If you don’t cook your meals on Sunday, no Netflix that week (your friend would have the password), and vice versa. Diabolical. Effective.

10) I LOOK AT MY DAMN PHONE TOO MUCH:

Change your phone to greyscale. Suddenly everything is way less vibrant and fun and the phone starts to lose its appeal. Turn on parental controls on your phone, have somebody else set your parental lock password, and delete all unnecessary apps from your phone – email, social media, YouTube, etc. Tough to get distracted by a device that doesn’t have anything fun to do on it, right?

Instead, have a real life conversation, even with a stranger! Read a damn book!

Maybe Ready Player One! Maybe THIS one 🙂

Or if you’re looking for some free literature to help change your life, you can join The NF Rebellion and download a plethora (I don’t get to use that word enough) of free ebooks as our way of welcoming you to our community!

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

Use Technology to Change Your Default Behavior

We’re creatures of habit, and products of our environment. If we’re not intentional with our time, our default behavior becomes:

Netflix and ice cream after work instead of hitting the gym.

Gaming late into the night instead of getting quality sleep.

Fast food instead of taking the time to batch-cook our meals for the week.

When we don’t take control, we give that control subconsciously to what’s most convenient. And technology will gladly take that control from you, because every company’s stock price and profit margin depend on it.

These are companies with tens of thousands of employees, scientists, psychologists, and billions of dollars of research at their disposal and their only goal is to get more of your attention/time/focus/money.

Sure, you can lament the fact that you don’t have enough willpower or motivation or whatever to avoid all of these temptations to do the boring, challenging activity that will dramatically improve your life in the long term.

You can EITHER:

Beat yourself up for what you THINK you should be doing but can’t.

Accept that this is reality, and that you need to stop relying on yourself and instead start relying on systems.

I mean this in a good way, but I gave up on myself a long time ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. Because games and social media and TV are too enjoyable! So I don’t even give myself the option to get tempted by this stuff by using technology to my benefit.

So be more like Wade Watts and build systems in your life and use the Matrix to your advantage.

YOUR TURN:

Which tech hack is your favorite for getting you to make healthier decisions daily?

Do you have a strategy that you’ve put in place to level up your own life?

Share them in the comments below and help your fellow nerds out!

And then go read/see Ready Player One 🙂

-Steve

###

photo credit: Profound Whatever 8-bit Basement, jjackowski, Safety Protocols Disabled, JD Hancock Wocka Wocka Wocka!,

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

People who grew up without social media, who had their first interaction with computers be in computer labs at school playing Oregon Trail: The Oregon Trail Generation

Social Media is making us more anxious: study

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s thoughts in this space in his fantastic book, Deep Work.

https://ift.tt/2GJeAJA

[neilmillerne]

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life

“Taaaaaaaaake onnnnnnnn me,

Taaaaaaaake meeeeee on!

I’ll beeeeeeee goonnnnnnne,

In a day or TWOOOOOOO!”

What the hell does that mean? Who cares!

All I know is that I can’t get a-ha’s “Take on Me” out of my head. It’s been there ever since the trailer dropped for the nerdy nostalgia-bomb that is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” a blockbuster movie out now, based on the best-selling book of the same name:

As a child of the Oregon Trail generation[1], I thoroughly enjoyed all of the pop culture and nerd references throughout the novel and could certainly relate to the main character Wade Watts, an overweight awkward teenager who loves 80’s pop culture and escapes a crappy existence by spending most of his time in virtual worlds.

It had me thinking deeply about how technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives, in both good ways and bad.

We can’t not check our email every 3 seconds. We can’t stop watching Netflix. We can’t stop scrolling through photos on Instagram. We can’t sit through a conversation with a person in front of us without habitually checking our phone every time it buzzes.

And then we all wonder why we are too busy, distracted, unhealthy, unhappy, and can’t get our shit together.

These days, it’s becoming more and more commonplace to use technology for convenience and quick bouts of entertainment and happiness to shield us from the reality that there are parts of our lives or our health we’re unhappy with.

In Ready Player One, we get a very plausible look into a dystopian future where those societal trends have continued: technology gets better and more convenient, and people spend more and more time escaping into more exciting virtual lives online.

And society has nearly collapsed as a result.

Although this book is partly a cautionary tale about where we’re heading if we don’t change our behavior, it’s also a charming Hero’s Journey, deep fried in neon-tinted nostalgia, that I couldn’t put down.

As a gamer who thinks about life like a game (and even wrote a book about this very idea), every page of this book had me grinning from ear to ear.

Today I want to quickly discuss the pitfalls of technology and then share my 10 favorite ways to use technology to get ourselves to actually do the stuff that matters every day.

This is Nerd Fitness, after all.

So…ready, player one?

Why Ready Player ONe Matters

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.

Technology has allowed me to create Nerd Fitness and deliver this article to you. It’s changed my life decidedly for the better and made literally everything easier.

The problem comes when technology gets TOO damn good. Video games are getting TOO well designed and addicting. TV shows and the delivery of those shows is so well done that you can lose an entire Saturday to 10 episodes in a row of Stranger Things before you realize it. Social media can be TOO pervasive, causing us to cast aside real life friendships and deep conversation in instead spend our time virtually – and superficially – connecting with people.

We trade likes and thumbs up in this unwritten but very real economy of fluffing each other’s egos.

If you’ve read any of the recent studies on this stuff, you know that social media is actually making us unhappier and more anxious[2], and yet we can’t get ourselves to stop seeking “just another hit.”

It’s getting easier and easier to say “one more level” or “I’ll just check Instagram quickly” and 10-15 minutes of your life is lost in a black hole of junk-food style entertainment.

And this causes us to forgo what is ACTUALLY important in our lives: Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Practicing self-care. Getting enough sleep. Connecting with people in real life. [3]

Which brings me back to Ready Player One.

If you haven’t read the book or don’t plan on seeing the movie, how did you end up on Nerd Fitness allow me to quickly explain the premise:

The year is 2045, and technology has advanced dramatically while the rest of society has devolved. Our main character Wade Watts is an overweight, awkward high school senior with little money to his name.

Every day, Wade puts on a virtual reality headset to plug into The OASIS, a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) – think Second Life or World of Warcraft on steroids. OASIS has become so successful that its something pretty much everybody on the planet now uses.

In the OASIS, Wade attends school, hangs out with friends, and gets to create this alternate life for himself. Depending on how much in-game currency you have, you can visit various worlds, level up your character by completing quests, and make a life for yourself.

For most people, life in the OASIS kicks the crap out of their miserable real life, which means they use this second life as an escape from the harsh reality. And the more time they spend in game, the more they neglect their real-life health happiness, which further perpetuates a negative downward spiral.

So how does one stop letting the Matrix run their lives and instead take control back?

Let’s see what Wade did.

Wade Gets in Shape to Level Up His Life

Wade’s in a not-so-great place.

He lives in isolation, is very unhappy with his physical appearance, struggles socially, and chooses to withdraw more and more into an anonymous character online that’s much more exciting than his real world counterpart.

This is already happening today, with people losing their jobs, relationships, families, and even their lives due to online gaming or technology addictions.

Fortunately, Wade did something that was so freaking smart and clever that gets the 100% Nerd FItness Stamp of Approval.

[Note to self: buy stamp of approval.]

At a turning point in the story, Wade makes a decision that probably seemed small at the time but forever altered his life’s path. He turned on the voluntary Fitness Lockout protocol of the OASIS. This meant that every day, Wade had his biometrics tracked, and rigged his system so that he was locked out of using the OASIS until he got enough physical activity every day.

What this means: Wade used technology to make his life decidedly better instead of making it worse. He was so addicted to using the OASIS that he needed to be in there. Which meant if he wanted to play, he had only ONE path to connection:

Doing the damn exercise!

Unsurprisingly, this changed Wade’s negative downward spiral into a positive virtuous cycle. Getting all that exercise started to make him feel better about himself and gave him more energy. He got hooked on how he felt after exercise and how much more pride he felt looking in the mirror. In other words, it felt like he had regained control, and this caused him to want to continue to chase that feeling.

Wade was smart enough to build a system that forced himself to do what was best for him, and stuck with it long enough until that activity because his new default behavior.

Depending on where you’re at in your fitness journey, this might sound like a pipe dream. However, I can tell you that there’s one common thread in every one of our success stories – whether it’s single moms or opera-singing IT professionals, they all say the same thing:

“I don’t know how it happened, but somehow…I now actually look forward to exercising.”

Here’s how you can be like Wade.

10 Ways to Make Technology Work For You

I don’t believe technology is inherently good or bad.

It’s a tool that can be used to improve or harm our lives. Oftentimes, a little bit is good, a lot is detrimental.

Inspired by Ready Player One, I wanted to go through some ways I’ve implemented technological hurdles in my life to actually make my life LESS convenient. I’m using it to keep me from devolving too far down rabbit holes of gaming, Netflix, and instead just do the damn things I need to do every day to make my life better.

Here are my favorite examples:

1) I WANT TO EXERCISE MORE AND WATCH LESS NETFLIX:

Although we can’t do EXACTLY what Wade did in Ready Player One, we can emulate it pretty closely. For example, give your spouse/friend/roommate/coworker your login credentials to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Have them change the password and not tell you.

Only after you do the thing you’ve agreed to do that day (send them a photo of you at the gym) will they give you the password.

2) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO GO TO THE GYM ENOUGH:

Do temptation bundling. Download your favorite audiobook or your favorite shows on Netflix. ONLY allow yourself to watch/listen to these while you’re walking on a treadmill at the gym or exercising.

How to do this? Download the shows to your iPad. Next time you to go to gym, ask the general manager to set the password on your iPad so that he’s the only one that can unlock it. If you want to watch the show, they’ll have to let you in!

3) I WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

I know there’s a big movement to #deleteFacebook right now, but we use Facebook to connect with members of the community and our products and services. But I know everytime I go to Facebook for work reasons, I end up scrolling through my newsfeed for 10-15 min and I get VERY little out of it.

So I use tech to my advantage. In addition to deleting social media off my phone, I turned off my newsfeed. If you use Google Chrome, install newsfeed eradicator. Now my time spent on Facebook is minimal, the distraction is gone, and I can still connect with people when it fits my life. This is what I see when I sign into Facebook:

BORING. I might as well get back to work!

My friend Sol has given his facebook password to his girlfriend and makes sure he isn’t logged in on any of his computers. So he only uses it when it fits into his schedule. There’s no compulsive checking during the day.

4) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO PLAY FEWER VIDEO GAMES:

Be your own parent! I have installed parental controls on my Nintendo Switch and PS4. It locks the system during certain hours, or I can limit myself to playing only during a certain number of hours. When you’re in the right mindset, install these controls and have somebody else set your passwords so you can’t just turn it off.

Stop relying on willpower – these games are too damn good. I’m currently hooked on Assassin’s Creed: Origins and the struggle is real. I imagine if I even took one hit of Fortnite I’d be mainlining battle royales all the way to rehab by next Tuesday.

5) I WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER:

Hat tip to my friend Thomas Frank on this one. Schedule a really embarrassing tweet/photo to publish 5 min after you need to wake up, and put your phone across the room. You have to wake up, walk across the room, and stop the scheduled tweet from sending. WAYYYY more effective than an alarm clock you can just snooze!

6) I WANT TO STOP EATING FAST FOOD:

Leave your ATM debit card at home, and only bring a credit card with you to work, preferably one that you share with your spouse. Have them receive an email notification for every time the card is used. And if it is used at a fast food restaurant, they’ll donate $50 you gave them to a cause you hate.

7) I CAN’T GET MY KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES: 

Be like this awesome mom:

8) I WANT TO MOVE MORE EVERY DAY:

Get yourself a cheap fitbit (I have a Flex 2 and LOVE it for sleep tracking purposes, but also interesting to see my step count). Take somebody you trust, and friend them on Fitbit’s platform. Then, agree to an amount of steps you need to take every day before you can watch TV, play video games, etc. If you don’t reach said steps before you slack off for the day, they will post a super embarrassing photo that you’ve sent them on social media.

9) I WANT TO COOK HEALTHIER MEALS:

Throw all of the junk food out of your house. Instead of using Amazon Prime to just deliver you useless crap you don’t need, have it set to auto-deliver you fresh groceries or meal kits regularly. Use technology and convenience to your advantage and make the most convenient option the healthiest one. Once you eliminate fast food, junk food, and crap you don’t need to buy, you can increase your food budget to compensate for the increased of convenience here.

You can also set up a mission with friends where you have to batch cook your meals on Sunday (how to batch cook here). If you don’t cook your meals on Sunday, no Netflix that week (your friend would have the password), and vice versa. Diabolical. Effective.

10) I LOOK AT MY DAMN PHONE TOO MUCH:

Change your phone to greyscale. Suddenly everything is way less vibrant and fun and the phone starts to lose its appeal. Turn on parental controls on your phone, have somebody else set your parental lock password, and delete all unnecessary apps from your phone – email, social media, YouTube, etc. Tough to get distracted by a device that doesn’t have anything fun to do on it, right?

Instead, have a real life conversation, even with a stranger! Read a damn book!

Maybe Ready Player One! Maybe THIS one 🙂

Or if you’re looking for some free literature to help change your life, you can join The NF Rebellion and download a plethora (I don’t get to use that word enough) of free ebooks as our way of welcoming you to our community!

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

Use Technology to Change Your Default Behavior

We’re creatures of habit, and products of our environment. If we’re not intentional with our time, our default behavior becomes:

Netflix and ice cream after work instead of hitting the gym.

Gaming late into the night instead of getting quality sleep.

Fast food instead of taking the time to batch-cook our meals for the week.

When we don’t take control, we give that control subconsciously to what’s most convenient. And technology will gladly take that control from you, because every company’s stock price and profit margin depend on it.

These are companies with tens of thousands of employees, scientists, psychologists, and billions of dollars of research at their disposal and their only goal is to get more of your attention/time/focus/money.

Sure, you can lament the fact that you don’t have enough willpower or motivation or whatever to avoid all of these temptations to do the boring, challenging activity that will dramatically improve your life in the long term.

You can EITHER:

Beat yourself up for what you THINK you should be doing but can’t.

Accept that this is reality, and that you need to stop relying on yourself and instead start relying on systems.

I mean this in a good way, but I gave up on myself a long time ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. Because games and social media and TV are too enjoyable! So I don’t even give myself the option to get tempted by this stuff by using technology to my benefit.

So be more like Wade Watts and build systems in your life and use the Matrix to your advantage.

YOUR TURN:

Which tech hack is your favorite for getting you to make healthier decisions daily?

Do you have a strategy that you’ve put in place to level up your own life?

Share them in the comments below and help your fellow nerds out!

And then go read/see Ready Player One 🙂

-Steve

###

photo credit: Profound Whatever 8-bit Basement, jjackowski, Safety Protocols Disabled, JD Hancock Wocka Wocka Wocka!,

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

People who grew up without social media, who had their first interaction with computers be in computer labs at school playing Oregon Trail: The Oregon Trail Generation

Social Media is making us more anxious: study

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s thoughts in this space in his fantastic book, Deep Work.

https://ift.tt/2GJeAJA

[lindafrancois]

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life

“Taaaaaaaaake onnnnnnnn me,

Taaaaaaaake meeeeee on!

I’ll beeeeeeee goonnnnnnne,

In a day or TWOOOOOOO!”

What the hell does that mean? Who cares!

All I know is that I can’t get a-ha’s “Take on Me” out of my head. It’s been there ever since the trailer dropped for the nerdy nostalgia-bomb that is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” a blockbuster movie out now, based on the best-selling book of the same name:

As a child of the Oregon Trail generation[1], I thoroughly enjoyed all of the pop culture and nerd references throughout the novel and could certainly relate to the main character Wade Watts, an overweight awkward teenager who loves 80’s pop culture and escapes a crappy existence by spending most of his time in virtual worlds.

It had me thinking deeply about how technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives, in both good ways and bad.

We can’t not check our email every 3 seconds. We can’t stop watching Netflix. We can’t stop scrolling through photos on Instagram. We can’t sit through a conversation with a person in front of us without habitually checking our phone every time it buzzes.

And then we all wonder why we are too busy, distracted, unhealthy, unhappy, and can’t get our shit together.

These days, it’s becoming more and more commonplace to use technology for convenience and quick bouts of entertainment and happiness to shield us from the reality that there are parts of our lives or our health we’re unhappy with.

In Ready Player One, we get a very plausible look into a dystopian future where those societal trends have continued: technology gets better and more convenient, and people spend more and more time escaping into more exciting virtual lives online.

And society has nearly collapsed as a result.

Although this book is partly a cautionary tale about where we’re heading if we don’t change our behavior, it’s also a charming Hero’s Journey, deep fried in neon-tinted nostalgia, that I couldn’t put down.

As a gamer who thinks about life like a game (and even wrote a book about this very idea), every page of this book had me grinning from ear to ear.

Today I want to quickly discuss the pitfalls of technology and then share my 10 favorite ways to use technology to get ourselves to actually do the stuff that matters every day.

This is Nerd Fitness, after all.

So…ready, player one?

Why Ready Player ONe Matters

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.

Technology has allowed me to create Nerd Fitness and deliver this article to you. It’s changed my life decidedly for the better and made literally everything easier.

The problem comes when technology gets TOO damn good. Video games are getting TOO well designed and addicting. TV shows and the delivery of those shows is so well done that you can lose an entire Saturday to 10 episodes in a row of Stranger Things before you realize it. Social media can be TOO pervasive, causing us to cast aside real life friendships and deep conversation in instead spend our time virtually – and superficially – connecting with people.

We trade likes and thumbs up in this unwritten but very real economy of fluffing each other’s egos.

If you’ve read any of the recent studies on this stuff, you know that social media is actually making us unhappier and more anxious[2], and yet we can’t get ourselves to stop seeking “just another hit.”

It’s getting easier and easier to say “one more level” or “I’ll just check Instagram quickly” and 10-15 minutes of your life is lost in a black hole of junk-food style entertainment.

And this causes us to forgo what is ACTUALLY important in our lives: Eating healthy. Exercising regularly. Practicing self-care. Getting enough sleep. Connecting with people in real life. [3]

Which brings me back to Ready Player One.

If you haven’t read the book or don’t plan on seeing the movie, how did you end up on Nerd Fitness allow me to quickly explain the premise:

The year is 2045, and technology has advanced dramatically while the rest of society has devolved. Our main character Wade Watts is an overweight, awkward high school senior with little money to his name.

Every day, Wade puts on a virtual reality headset to plug into The OASIS, a MMOSG (massively multiplayer online simulation game) – think Second Life or World of Warcraft on steroids. OASIS has become so successful that its something pretty much everybody on the planet now uses.

In the OASIS, Wade attends school, hangs out with friends, and gets to create this alternate life for himself. Depending on how much in-game currency you have, you can visit various worlds, level up your character by completing quests, and make a life for yourself.

For most people, life in the OASIS kicks the crap out of their miserable real life, which means they use this second life as an escape from the harsh reality. And the more time they spend in game, the more they neglect their real-life health happiness, which further perpetuates a negative downward spiral.

So how does one stop letting the Matrix run their lives and instead take control back?

Let’s see what Wade did.

Wade Gets in Shape to Level Up His Life

Wade’s in a not-so-great place.

He lives in isolation, is very unhappy with his physical appearance, struggles socially, and chooses to withdraw more and more into an anonymous character online that’s much more exciting than his real world counterpart.

This is already happening today, with people losing their jobs, relationships, families, and even their lives due to online gaming or technology addictions.

Fortunately, Wade did something that was so freaking smart and clever that gets the 100% Nerd FItness Stamp of Approval.

[Note to self: buy stamp of approval.]

At a turning point in the story, Wade makes a decision that probably seemed small at the time but forever altered his life’s path. He turned on the voluntary Fitness Lockout protocol of the OASIS. This meant that every day, Wade had his biometrics tracked, and rigged his system so that he was locked out of using the OASIS until he got enough physical activity every day.

What this means: Wade used technology to make his life decidedly better instead of making it worse. He was so addicted to using the OASIS that he needed to be in there. Which meant if he wanted to play, he had only ONE path to connection:

Doing the damn exercise!

Unsurprisingly, this changed Wade’s negative downward spiral into a positive virtuous cycle. Getting all that exercise started to make him feel better about himself and gave him more energy. He got hooked on how he felt after exercise and how much more pride he felt looking in the mirror. In other words, it felt like he had regained control, and this caused him to want to continue to chase that feeling.

Wade was smart enough to build a system that forced himself to do what was best for him, and stuck with it long enough until that activity because his new default behavior.

Depending on where you’re at in your fitness journey, this might sound like a pipe dream. However, I can tell you that there’s one common thread in every one of our success stories – whether it’s single moms or opera-singing IT professionals, they all say the same thing:

“I don’t know how it happened, but somehow…I now actually look forward to exercising.”

Here’s how you can be like Wade.

10 Ways to Make Technology Work For You

I don’t believe technology is inherently good or bad.

It’s a tool that can be used to improve or harm our lives. Oftentimes, a little bit is good, a lot is detrimental.

Inspired by Ready Player One, I wanted to go through some ways I’ve implemented technological hurdles in my life to actually make my life LESS convenient. I’m using it to keep me from devolving too far down rabbit holes of gaming, Netflix, and instead just do the damn things I need to do every day to make my life better.

Here are my favorite examples:

1) I WANT TO EXERCISE MORE AND WATCH LESS NETFLIX:

Although we can’t do EXACTLY what Wade did in Ready Player One, we can emulate it pretty closely. For example, give your spouse/friend/roommate/coworker your login credentials to Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Have them change the password and not tell you.

Only after you do the thing you’ve agreed to do that day (send them a photo of you at the gym) will they give you the password.

2) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO GO TO THE GYM ENOUGH:

Do temptation bundling. Download your favorite audiobook or your favorite shows on Netflix. ONLY allow yourself to watch/listen to these while you’re walking on a treadmill at the gym or exercising.

How to do this? Download the shows to your iPad. Next time you to go to gym, ask the general manager to set the password on your iPad so that he’s the only one that can unlock it. If you want to watch the show, they’ll have to let you in!

3) I WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

I know there’s a big movement to #deleteFacebook right now, but we use Facebook to connect with members of the community and our products and services. But I know everytime I go to Facebook for work reasons, I end up scrolling through my newsfeed for 10-15 min and I get VERY little out of it.

So I use tech to my advantage. In addition to deleting social media off my phone, I turned off my newsfeed. If you use Google Chrome, install newsfeed eradicator. Now my time spent on Facebook is minimal, the distraction is gone, and I can still connect with people when it fits my life. This is what I see when I sign into Facebook:

BORING. I might as well get back to work!

My friend Sol has given his facebook password to his girlfriend and makes sure he isn’t logged in on any of his computers. So he only uses it when it fits into his schedule. There’s no compulsive checking during the day.

4) I CAN’T GET MYSELF TO PLAY FEWER VIDEO GAMES:

Be your own parent! I have installed parental controls on my Nintendo Switch and PS4. It locks the system during certain hours, or I can limit myself to playing only during a certain number of hours. When you’re in the right mindset, install these controls and have somebody else set your passwords so you can’t just turn it off.

Stop relying on willpower – these games are too damn good. I’m currently hooked on Assassin’s Creed: Origins and the struggle is real. I imagine if I even took one hit of Fortnite I’d be mainlining battle royales all the way to rehab by next Tuesday.

5) I WANT TO WAKE UP EARLIER:

Hat tip to my friend Thomas Frank on this one. Schedule a really embarrassing tweet/photo to publish 5 min after you need to wake up, and put your phone across the room. You have to wake up, walk across the room, and stop the scheduled tweet from sending. WAYYYY more effective than an alarm clock you can just snooze!

6) I WANT TO STOP EATING FAST FOOD:

Leave your ATM debit card at home, and only bring a credit card with you to work, preferably one that you share with your spouse. Have them receive an email notification for every time the card is used. And if it is used at a fast food restaurant, they’ll donate $50 you gave them to a cause you hate.

7) I CAN’T GET MY KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES: 

Be like this awesome mom:

8) I WANT TO MOVE MORE EVERY DAY:

Get yourself a cheap fitbit (I have a Flex 2 and LOVE it for sleep tracking purposes, but also interesting to see my step count). Take somebody you trust, and friend them on Fitbit’s platform. Then, agree to an amount of steps you need to take every day before you can watch TV, play video games, etc. If you don’t reach said steps before you slack off for the day, they will post a super embarrassing photo that you’ve sent them on social media.

9) I WANT TO COOK HEALTHIER MEALS:

Throw all of the junk food out of your house. Instead of using Amazon Prime to just deliver you useless crap you don’t need, have it set to auto-deliver you fresh groceries or meal kits regularly. Use technology and convenience to your advantage and make the most convenient option the healthiest one. Once you eliminate fast food, junk food, and crap you don’t need to buy, you can increase your food budget to compensate for the increased of convenience here.

You can also set up a mission with friends where you have to batch cook your meals on Sunday (how to batch cook here). If you don’t cook your meals on Sunday, no Netflix that week (your friend would have the password), and vice versa. Diabolical. Effective.

10) I LOOK AT MY DAMN PHONE TOO MUCH:

Change your phone to greyscale. Suddenly everything is way less vibrant and fun and the phone starts to lose its appeal. Turn on parental controls on your phone, have somebody else set your parental lock password, and delete all unnecessary apps from your phone – email, social media, YouTube, etc. Tough to get distracted by a device that doesn’t have anything fun to do on it, right?

Instead, have a real life conversation, even with a stranger! Read a damn book!

Maybe Ready Player One! Maybe THIS one 🙂

Or if you’re looking for some free literature to help change your life, you can join The NF Rebellion and download a plethora (I don’t get to use that word enough) of free ebooks as our way of welcoming you to our community!

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

Use Technology to Change Your Default Behavior

We’re creatures of habit, and products of our environment. If we’re not intentional with our time, our default behavior becomes:

Netflix and ice cream after work instead of hitting the gym.

Gaming late into the night instead of getting quality sleep.

Fast food instead of taking the time to batch-cook our meals for the week.

When we don’t take control, we give that control subconsciously to what’s most convenient. And technology will gladly take that control from you, because every company’s stock price and profit margin depend on it.

These are companies with tens of thousands of employees, scientists, psychologists, and billions of dollars of research at their disposal and their only goal is to get more of your attention/time/focus/money.

Sure, you can lament the fact that you don’t have enough willpower or motivation or whatever to avoid all of these temptations to do the boring, challenging activity that will dramatically improve your life in the long term.

You can EITHER:

Beat yourself up for what you THINK you should be doing but can’t.

Accept that this is reality, and that you need to stop relying on yourself and instead start relying on systems.

I mean this in a good way, but I gave up on myself a long time ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. Because games and social media and TV are too enjoyable! So I don’t even give myself the option to get tempted by this stuff by using technology to my benefit.

So be more like Wade Watts and build systems in your life and use the Matrix to your advantage.

YOUR TURN:

Which tech hack is your favorite for getting you to make healthier decisions daily?

Do you have a strategy that you’ve put in place to level up your own life?

Share them in the comments below and help your fellow nerds out!

And then go read/see Ready Player One 🙂

-Steve

###

photo credit: Profound Whatever 8-bit Basement, jjackowski, Safety Protocols Disabled, JD Hancock Wocka Wocka Wocka!,

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

People who grew up without social media, who had their first interaction with computers be in computer labs at school playing Oregon Trail: The Oregon Trail Generation

Social Media is making us more anxious: study

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s thoughts in this space in his fantastic book, Deep Work.

Ready Player One: 10 Tech Hacks to Lose Weight and Level Up Your Life published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/