I hope you’ve all had a great start to the year. This first issue of Noise Reduction for 2023 is full of links and tips to tweak the start of your 2023 as well as the usual thought provocation, guidance and inspiration.
Check out my interview on New Year’s Resolutions on Radio New Zealand earlier this week.
“When you make a New Year's resolution, it's kind of difficult, because it's not what you would call a smart goal.
“It's not particularly specific, it is in terms of the behaviour that you want to change, but it's not in terms of timeframe - the rest of your life is a very long time.
“And the first time you hit a speed wobble, and perhaps you're not so great on that day, it's easy to feel like you've just failed and there's no point carrying on.”
Evidence suggest embracing something positive rather than abstention is more effective, he says.
“If we can adopt what are called approach behaviours, so adopting more healthy things, rather than trying to avoid unhealthy things.
“And this is the trick; whenever you're trying to replace a behaviour, replace it with something that you enjoy and you get benefit from.
“And that way you're much more likely to stick to it than just avoiding something that you find unhelpful or is making you unhealthy.”
I’m certainly trying to find a bit more balance over the multiple things that I do, ensuring that I personally get a bit more fun and inspiration from the year to come. This also means that I need to focus on paying the bills - an unwelcome reality in the creator world.
And I say ‘creator’ rather than ‘writer’ exclusively because I am involved in a few different spheres of content creation (but, how I hate that phrase). As well as publishing three books over the last two years, I was also part of an award-winning podcast team, and continue to appear on NZ and international media regularly. And I’ve somewhat neglected my YouTube channel on Small Tech (and living smarter with it), as well as my psychology channel.
So, this year, I’m spreading my eggs across my various baskets a little more evenly than I did last year.
Over the last 9 months, I’ve leaned heavily into my Substack experiment. I really appreciate your support during this time, especially those of you who have committed to a paid membership - thank you so much for that. But the harsh reality is that the experiment hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. I’ve tried to keep my content as open as possible in the hope that an increasing number would see value in supporting my writing through paid membership.
In fact, the opposite has happened. Paid memberships have completely stagnated, and free subscriptions have not only stopped, but are reducing every week.
So here’s what’s happening:
I’ll be focusing my efforts on my weekly Noise Reduction round-up once a week, featuring a ‘what’s-on-my-mind’ essay fronting that each week.
The other features / writing will stop on Substack - for a while, at least. I do have a website which also has a blog. I’ve neglected this recently, so some of my writing that doesn’t appear to have been a good fit here may appear there, and then linked to editions of Noise Reduction.
Paid members will continue to receive Noise Reduction weekly.
I’ll open up Noise Reduction for free subscribers once a month.
Optimise will also continue on a once-a-month schedule for paid subscribers.
It’s been chastening to experience how much of the video-making process I’d forgotten - it really was now or never to get back into this again before my skills withered even further. Bu the link back to writing is a strong one. Writing scripts for myself to record on my psychology YouTube channel - which I focused on in the early stages of the pandemic - was the inspiration for me to write my first book. And it’s been the experience and process that really developed me into the write I am today.
Also:
I may / may not write some more short books but it’s not something I’m committing to just yet.
I’ll also be carefully considering how much longer I will remain a registered psychologist.
Now I’ve explained all this (I’ve been kind of nervous about putting it out there), I’ll get on with the core content for this week’s edition.
If you’re a free subscriber, this is the newsletter you’ll have access to this month. The rest won’t be emailed to you. I don’t want to clutter your inboxes with previews. But if you’re interested in signing up for paid membership to ensure you continue to receive Noise Reduction weekly, here’s a special 20% discount offer for you - it expires in a week.
Nothing radical. Just no / little effort ways to improve your life.
Bring fruit to work. Bring fruit to bed! Illustrations: Leon Edler/The Guardian
36 Stretch in the morning. And maybe in the evening.
37 If you’re going less than a mile, walk or cycle. About half of car journeys are under two miles, yet these create more pollution than longer journeys as the engine isn’t warmed up yet.
38 Sleep with your phone in a different room (and buy an alarm clock).
39 Send postcards from your holidays. Send them even if you’re not on holiday.
40 Instead of buying new shoes, get old ones resoled and buy new laces.
41 Buy a plant. Think you’ll kill it? Buy a fake one.
“I don’t know, Dad … it seems a little clunky,” my 12-year-old son said as I fumbled with my new Light Phone II. This was a replacement for my failing iPhone. I had decided not to get a new iPhone, or any other smartphone. I needed a break. I would go into the new year without a smartphone, to see how it felt.
My son was right: It was clunky—a little slower and a lot less whizbang-slick than iPhones had numbed me to expect. But this was the point, wasn’t it? To be a little more clunky, to consciously tap the brakes on my everyday life?
It’s an overused phrase, but a bit of awe can improve your health. Experts say wonder is an essential human emotion — and a salve for a turbulent mind.
Irene Servillo
So what is it biologically? Awe wasn’t one of the six basic emotions —anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness — identified back in 1972, Dr. Keltner said. But new research shows that awe “is its own thing,” he said. Our bodies respond differently when we are experiencing awe than when we are feeling joy, contentment or fear. We make a different sound, show a different facial expression. Dr. Keltner found that awe activates the vagal nerves, clusters of neurons in the spinal cord that regulate various bodily functions, and slows our heart rate, relieves digestion and deepens breathing.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!