Everyday Systems: Podcast : Episode 91
State of the Systems 2024
Welcome to the State of the Systems 2024, in which I review how the Everyday Systems are going, both for me personally, and in terms of the wider project of thinking and writing about them. It’s my 5th consecutive annual state of the systems, and my 6th one ever.
2024 was a good year in terms of my personal compliance – always important to practice before I preach. I’ll included a screenshot from my lifelog summary tab in the transcript for those who want the full cryptic, details, but here are a few highlights:
Body systems
My No-S Diet observance for the year was at an all time high. My “green percent days, “ the percentage of days that show up as green success days on my lifelog habit tracker, so neither a yellow exempt nor a red failure day, which for the last several years has been exactly 59%, edged up to 62%. I don’t think it’s significant, really, that it ticked up. But it shows that I’m taking No-S at least as seriously as I ever have, 20-something years into it.
I was surprised, the first time I ever ran this green percent day calculation, at how low the percentage was, how many S-days of one sort or another there are, and that it works nonetheless. But statistically it makes sense. Saturdays and Sundays alone account for 2/7th or 28.5% of days, so the baseline maximum green days, without any holidays or vacation days, is 71.5%. That’s if you took zero non-weekend S-days, not Christmas, not Thanksgiving, not your birthday. So I hope this is inspirational, to those of you just starting out. You can take two non-weekend S-days a month easy, I’m closer to three, with summer vacation accounting for a good chunk of these. People talk about an 80% solution being good enough, wanting to find that attainable sweet spot of just enough effort to get results before you hit diminishing returns. Well, with No-S, in my experience, all you need is a 59% solution. I have years recorded in my lifelog with just 57% green percentage, with no noticeable difference in results. How hard is that? If you’re on the fence, you can do this, it’s really not that much deprivation at all.
Shovelglove and how I’ve been alternating it with running and recovering from injuries in both I just covered in detail last episode. I’ll just mention one development not explicitly connected with the Zeno’s Paradox Exercise Progress Plan I described there. I call it “value the combos” and it extends beyond just exercise to how exercise relates to non-exercise habits.
I’ve always paired my exercise with another activity to engage my mind, but this year I’ve taken this up a notch. In the past, I’ve often watched German news while doing Shovelglove to practice my language skills, or streamed a series in German, but recently I’ve been seeking out more elevated stuff and it’s been so great. A longstanding book club I’m in (very intimate, only two other close friends) has been on a Shakespeare kick for a little over a year, and I’ve been watching multiple versions of each play we read, mostly during Shovelglove. In between, as palate cleansers, I’ve been watching classical music performances. It’s amazing what's available for free on Youtube. And the close ups on the musicians and performers makes it in a way almost better than what you can see in-person (at least, for the seats I’d be able to afford). Hilary Hahn, man, what a radiant presence – her Bruch violin concerto is just about one Shovelglove session (plus stretches) long. It’s so good to be paying total attention to the performance instead of having it on as background while I’m working as I otherwise usually do.
I still get plenty of German news, I’ve just paired it with a different, more appropriate activity: while I’m cooking or prepping a meal. I’m sufficiently distracted then that I don’t want to listen to something that requires too much attention, lest the meal or my chopping fingers or my full appreciation of a Victorian novel suffer. That’s when it’s an optimal time for die Tagesthemen. And some of the “elevated stuff” I watch during Shovelglove is also auf Deutsch. I recently watched a performance of Faust part 1 (free on youtube!), with Bruno Ganz, the guy who played Hitler in Downfall, as Faust, which took me a moment to adjust to, but he was brilliant.
When I run, I almost always listen to an audiobook, and I’m usually so hooked on whatever I’m listening to that I can hardly wait to go on another run to make another solid half hour's progress.
“Value the combos” is a catchphrase I have in my recorded mantras to remind me to appreciate and nurture these various pairings.
Urban ranger continues to go strong. I clocked my second highest annual daily average step count since I’ve been keeping track, just a touch under 13,000. Urban Ranger, too, has a soul-system pairing that I value highly: audiodidact output (talking to myself into my audio recorder). But that’s of pretty long standing now, nothing new. I have started a new Urban ranger adjacent habit of taking my cat out for walks on a leash, which doesn’t have much exercise value, since I’m mostly just standing around while he’s eating grass or something, but it has other benefits that I’ll explore in a future episode.
Spirits Systems
It was also a good year for me in terms of glass ceiling, or rather my flexible height glass ceilings. I drank slightly less alcohol on most my metrics than I ever have recorded doing, so at least since 2016, and probably a lot longer than that, since I imagine I drank a lot more before I started making myself record it all. I tied with 2022 for lowest drink count overall (a touch under a drink per day), tied with 2023 in original 2-drink maximum glass ceiling compliance (95%), got my lowest normalized drink count ever (1.24 standard drinks per day equivalent) so less total alcohol, probably the most important metric), lowest max and normalized max drinks per day ever (also pretty important given how disastrous even one extreme overage can be), and second lowest average drink size. I also consumed less Ativan than I have since I started recording in 2016, half of what I did last year, and less than a quarter of my heaviest-usage year, and didn’t mix with alcohol in a given day even once. Given my personal history and predilections, these are pretty great numbers.
Three critical factors that have been operating in the last few years to drive this steady multi-year improvement, which are:
1) Variable height glass ceiling since 2020, and the mirror Ativan ceiling since 2022. Instead of a flat, two-drink-a-day limit every day, I have a variable limit of two on “S-days” and zero on “N-days.” I also apply a mirror, equal-and-opposite set of limitations for Ativan consumption, ensuring that the two never overlap on the same day, and leveraging both ceilings so they mutually reinforce each other.
2) My glass ceiling accountability partner since 2022. It’s like we’ve formed our own mini, “not quite alcoholics” anonymous. The accountability part is great, but it’s the company part that matters even more, I think. Self-improvement can be a lonely business. Having a partner makes it less lonely and even generous – because you’re helping someone else, too.
3) Keeping track of when these interventions happened and the incentive and satisfaction of seeing my lifelog numbers look greener and greener. It’s striking and highly motivating to be able to see the connection between when I introduced certain tweaks and finesses and my numbers improving. The two I mentioned just before made a clear, immediate, lasting impact. It’s also helpful to see which tweaks didn’t have any discernible effect, so I can discontinue those and free up willpower and attention.
Soul Systems
Every day, on my daily personal punch card, I give myself a mood score, ranging from 3, which is a state of bliss probably not vouchsafed to mortal man, to negative three, which is as close to hell as my hypochondriac disposition can imagine. Zero is the dividing line between “it’s worth it” (barely) or not. I’ve never given myself a three, though I have gotten some two and a halfs, and never come close to a negative three (negative numbers are very, very rare, clinical depression land, which thankfully I haven’t visited in a long time). Then every week on Saturday morning, before I start Weekend Luddite, I transfer my mood scores along with other key indicators from my punchcards, to my lifelog spreadsheet so I can track trends over time more easily. It’s a little impressionistic, obviously, but over time, averaged out, I think, meaningful. It’s like my weight on the scale, which I also track: any one day might be a blip, or poor scoring rather than poor reality, but over time, longitudinally, there is real signal here.
My mood score is up for the 4th consecutive year since I’ve been recording it. And I do think this corresponds to something real, not just mood grade inflation. Part of it is I stumbled into a good, well-balanced job. Part of it is family and friends and health are doing well. Covid is no longer raging and some of the very hard personal stuff that came during that time is now a few years back. It’s very un-stoical of me, but I know how much of my happiness depends on external things and other people. I’m philosophical enough to know that I’m not that philosophical. But some of it, some small part of it, has been in my control, and does have to do with how my Everyday Systems have been doing for me – and with the knowledge of how well these systems have been doing for me.
In particular, Spider Hunter, my CBT for anxiety game, has been great in terms of helping me catch myself in self-destructive psychological spirals and disengaging from them. This is probably my MVP system for the year.
As you may remember, the way Spider Hunter works is I get points for noticing whenever I am suffering from anxiety. The mechanics are a little more involved than that, but that’s the basic idea.
This helps in several ways: first of all, it weirdly cheers me up, and least a bit, at least sometimes. So that’s a very direct benefit. (“Yes! I’m feeling miserable, I get points!”)
Second, it incentivises me to face challenging situations instead of avoiding them, because, hey, I want those spider points.
Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, it helps me learn about myself by systematically paying better attention. I notice, consciously, situations that make me anxious instead of just unconsciously being buffeted around by them. Sometimes that self-knowledge helps me grow past my limitations. I see that I’m being silly or wrongheaded, and sometimes that clarity in itself can be enough. Other times it takes more work but the noticing is the critical starting point. Yet other times that knowledge is something I just have to come to accept about myself and my deficiencies, quirks and limitations. That’s valuable too. It makes it more bearable. And I can save my moral energy for actually tractable problems.
As I remind myself in my daily mantra, spider points are “a consolation, an incentive, and self knowledge.”
I’m becoming increasingly expansive about what I’ll give myself spider points for. If I notice I’ve had uncharitable thoughts toward someone – if been a jerk, or just annoying, or become inordinately annoyed by them – I give myself points, which sounds crazy, like I’m incentivizing myself to be a jerk, but I’m incentivizing myself to notice that I’m being a jerk, which is very different, and it’s helping me to become less of one.
What do “uncharitable thoughts” have to do with anxiety? I can concoct a connection (one of the innumerable things I get anxious about is whether or not I am a bad person), but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. If this framework, this game, helps beyond just pure-play anxiety, all the better. There are all kinds of spiders in my psyche. And Spider Hunter has been helping me with more and more of them.
A related system that has been helping me process the information I'm getting with Spider Hunter is Motive Mixologist. This is barely a system at all; as with Urban ranger, it’s an inspirational metaphor, there are no rules involved. It’s a reminder to be aware of a certain useful and important aspect of reality: that all motives are hopelessly entangled, and that just because I’ve spotted an unattractive one doesn’t mean the entire mess of them, the entire mess of myself, is rotten. This is important when practicing Spider Hunter, because when I find a spider, I don’t want to get too freaked out by it. I want to be able to handle the not so great things I notice about myself – and the OK ones too, for example, so I can appropriately process a word of praise without flying into the stratosphere to come crashing down again.
The Weekend Luddite family of systems, right relationship with robots, apps for mentats, My Friend, Chat GPT, etc., continues to be very necessary and my compliance is good, though of course the march of technology presents an ongoing and ever-evolving challenge. “ProPro,” “Proactive Procrastination,” timing and logging my online news consumption, has been a very helpful new mini system these last few months. To use a No S Diet analogy, I now eat news like a meal rather than permasnacking on it. So I eat less, enjoy it more, and what I do eat is better quality. ProPro is for reading news. If I want to watch or listen to news, I don’t time it because I’m usually doing something else simultaneously – I just have to do it in German. So I hitch this dubious activity with something I feel unreservedly good about, practicing a second language.
Not having any social media apps on my phone and only using them on the computer, which I’ve been doing even a big longer than ProPro, also helps for similar reasons: I also eat social media like a meal–and it’s actually not too bad that way.
Another help, using a different (but not entirely different) analogy, is having good, or relatively innocuous, “methadone” apps to turn to when I feel the need to compulsively diddle with my phone (in my case, Anki flashcards and to a lesser degree, Duolingo). The compulsion to diddle is fed with something harmless, maybe even good, and in the process, dulled a little.
In general, my guiding principle is wherever possible, avoid absolute bans, find what’s good or necessary in tech and allow that in measured doses at appropriate times. If I’m hungry for something I should use that hunger rather than simply (probably vainly) trying to eradicate it (again, a lot like the No S Diet).
Meta Systems
All these wonderful stats I’ve been able to provide this episode are thanks to my Lifelog spreadsheet, and the Personal Punch Cards which feed into it. I’m ever more invested in those two linked systems. The downside is it’s work, definitely, and time. Specifically, 7-minute blocks of time prepping and post-processing the cards every morning, then scraps of time updating them during the day, and then a big block of time, 30 minutes plus, transferring them to the lifelog every week. But it’s well worth it, in terms of the handle it gives me on the chaos of my life, and it’s actually kind of fun in a way. In a sense, the whole Lifelog, in which, among many other things, I record my spider hunter points, is a bit of a game, and has some of that gamified, score-keeping appeal.
I was thinking of doing a youtube video, or couple of videos about how I practice both these meta systems nowadays, Personal Punchcards and the Lifelog. They’re so visual that an audio podcast might not be the best medium. And then I could show you the actual process, instead of just describing it. Because the process, the habit of doing this thing, is even more important than the physical (or digital) artifacts it produces.
[ In the meantime, see here for best available overview of Personal Punch Cards and Lifelog is here, including screenshots and photos, ]
OK, so much for me personally. I share this stuff not because (motive mixologist alert!) I am a narcissistic egomaniac who assumes everyone is intrinsically fascinated by what I had for breakfast, and certainly not because my limited accomplishments in self control are anything to brag about, but because I hope the some of the details of how I’ve been wrestling with practicing these systems over time might be helpful for fellow-wrestlers.
The Wider Project
Now for a quick update on the wider project of Everyday Systems: the book, the podcast, the website.
It was, once again, not a great year in terms of following through on grand resolutions about writing and technical projects. In my last state of the systems episode, I’d resolved to make progress on putting together a book, an Everyday Systems compendium, by making every second podcast episode a systems review, a sort of draft chapter. I did this a few times: three of the 10 episodes I put out this year could be construed as draft chapter reviews. And I think the exercise was helpful in itself; the No S Diet review especially, I think was helpful both for me and other people, but I’m not sure I feel any closer to actually having a book. I did start working on a very involved spreadsheet format table of contents, with different columns to categorize and describe each system, which I think actually might be helpful to incorporate into a revised Everyday Systems home page. But the more I puttered around on this TOC spreadsheet, the more I realized how much was left to do.
I made even less progress in terms of rejuvenating the Everyday Systems web sites and bulletin board. My idea of also tying technical updates to podcast episode releases was elegant – but I think I followed through exactly once. When it comes down to it, I’m really nervous about breaking something in this elderly software stack that I won’t be able to fix, or have the site go down for days or weeks while I try to resuscitate it. And even more fundamentally I’m not quite clear on how I’m going to be able to maintain whatever upgraded system I put into place any better than I have the old one.
So I think I’m going to refrain from making any similar grand pronouncements this year. Not because I’ve lost interest in either of these projects, but because I have a better sense now of how much work is involved, and the trade-offs I’ll have to make. I need to think more carefully about what exactly I’m hoping to achieve. Why do I want to write a book, for example? What could I achieve in that format better or differently than in these podcasts? How can I design a new web site, or web presence, that doesn’t bog me down even more than the old one in terms of maintenance, and actually gives people something better, better tools, a better online community? Some of the same kinds of big picture questions I had to ask myself about Shovelglove and running. I’ve been thinking I might have to apply a kind of Zeno’s Paradox Progress Plan to these creative and technical projects too.
But don’t worry, whatever I decide, I definitely plan to continue systematically revisiting older systems in these podcasts, whether as draft chapters or on their own. That part of my plan at least I think has definitely made sense. By popular acclaim (thank you for your email, Stefan) one of those revisitings will be Weekend Luddite writ large, both the specific system, and the persona, how to live with and in spite of technology. Probably also Shovelglove, once I get a little more Zeno’s Paradox progress under my belt. We’ll see if I can beat the 10 episodes a year I managed in 2024 and for the two years before. I’ll probably be content if I can match that.
One last big picture thought: I’m continually surprised, delighted (and a little horrified) that people are still using my habitcal app. That it still works at all is a bit of a miracle. It’s written in Perl, an ancient language, the Cobol of the web. Whenever people mention it I gently encourage them to start a spreadsheet Lifelog instead. But I think I underestimate what a barrier spreadsheets are for a lot of people, how intimidating they are to some, and what a dangerous temptation to unnecessary and distracting complexification they are to others. Honestly, I myself might not have been ready for a Lifelog until I’d had the discipline of a few years of simple and austere habitcaling under my belt. But I do think that with the right presentation, and maybe an easy to use template, or Lifelog builder tool, it could be the right next gen habitcal for technophobes and technoholics alike, with an easy onramp, and tremendous potential for growth with strong safeguards against needless complexity.
Well, that’s it for this episode and 2024. Best wishes for a happy and systematically moderate new year to you all. Thanks for listening.
© 2002-2025 Everyday Systems, All Rights Reserved.