J.D. Moyer

science fiction author, beatmaker, against fascism

Willpower as a Commodity, Part II (counterintuitive sleep tips)

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On January 17

In Health/Body-hacking, Metaprogramming

It’s strange starting a new blog.  On jondiandspesh.com I mostly wrote about dance music, clubbing, and the like.  I don’t think this blog will have any sort of focus.  Some of my favorite blogs are similarly unfocused.  Art de Vany‘s blog became popular because he posted pictures of his grain-free paleolithic lunches and his muscle-bound 70 year-old body, but he also wrote about statistics, Hollywood films, and economics.  Now he’s made his blog private (his bandwidth fees were getting out of control and he didn’t want to deal with advertising) but I enjoyed the eclectic nature of his writings for a long time.

I think the main reason I like to blog is to make sure I can express myself without boring my friends to death with info-dumps that they may or may not be in the mood to hear.  I assume nobody is making you read this — you’re here voluntarily.  You can stop reading at any time.  It’s a perfect arrangement.  I can “talk” uninterrupted for pages on end about whatever is on my mind, and you can leave at any time without any fear of an awkward social moment.

WILLPOWER AS A COMMODITY, PART II

In my last post I stated my opinion that willpower is more like an expendable resource than a muscle you can build, and that the two aspects of willpower management are:

1) Stopping the Leaks

and

2) Doing What’s Important

By “Stopping the Leaks” I mean finding the areas of our lives where we’re expending effort and tweaking our behavior and rituals so that those areas no longer drain our daily reserves of willpower.  I think most of us can “trim” willpower expenditures in at least a couple of the following areas:

  • Fighting sleep deprivation
  • Fighting carbohydrate cravings
  • Enduring annoying behavior
  • Doing unnecessary tasks
  • Excessive exercising
  • Ignoring inclination and mood
  • Having excessively high standards

SLEEP DEPRIVATION

Fighting sleep deprivation can be exhausting.  Being anywhere but in bed when you’re tired is a fast-track to misery.  When you’re tired, the simplest to-do items feel like Herculean (or Promethean?) tasks.

I’m going to try to avoid saying mind-numbingly obvious things in this blog.  I’m not going to say anything about the effect drinking ten cups of Peet’s coffee every day, or eating an entire bar of 85% dark chocolate right before bed might have on your sleep cycle.  I’m not going to suggest that you wear earplugs if your spouse snores like a wheelbarrow being dragged down a gravel driveway.  I’m just going to mention a few things that have had a drastic positive effect on my own sleep cycle.

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT 30-DAY EXPERIMENT

Last June Kia and I tried a 30-day experiment; no artificial light in the evening.  I first became interested in the effects of artificial light on sleep after reading this book and this article in the New York Times.  We wanted to experience what sleep might have been like in the pre-electrical era, so after when the sun went down (around 8:30 or 9pm), we turned off (or didn’t turn on) all lights, computers, TV’s — we even taped the fridge-light lever down.

A typical evening at home that month involved reading by candlelight from 9 to 9:30 (yawning the entire time), and finally succumbing to sleep around 10pm.  We *were* co-sleeping with our one-year-old daughter at the time (so we were more tired than usual) but nonetheless we found ourselves going to bed significantly earlier than we had the previous month.  It was a bit like going camping every night, except we were living indoors.

For the first few days we both slept longer than usual; I think about ten hours a night (paying off sleep debt).  After that, we probably both slept eight or nine hours a night.  Some nights I would get up around 2am and read for an hour or so (the NYT article discusses how the eight hour block might be a recent norm or expectation; pre-electrical people may have often slept in four hour blocks).

We both felt good that month.  We didn’t get sleepy during the day (which is unusual, considering we had an infant child).  The most unexpected thing was that we felt much happier that month.  We both had the experience of feeling spontaneous joy/excitement at random times during the day, for no particular reason.  This was probably incredibly annoying to our friends and family members.

With these results you might wonder why we didn’t continue the experiment indefinitely.  I can tell you — reading by candlelight every night is BORING.  However we do make a point to turn the lights down fairly early in the evening on nights that we’re just chilling at home.

So that’s one point — if you have trouble getting sleepy at night then turn down the lights.

VITAMIN D

The second factor that improved my sleep quality was taking prescription level doses of Vitamin D.  It was after having two colds in a row that I saw this video and immediately started taking 5K IU of Vitamin D3 daily (I’ve since reduced my dose to 2000-4000 a day).  No colds since, and I’ve been experiencing deeper and more restorative sleep than I have since I was in my twenties (I’m forty now).  The clinical research of this science dude supports my personal experience — adequate Vitamin D levels are important for deep sleep (not to mention reducing risk of nearly every type of cancer, improving mood, improving bone health, and positively affecting 36 organs in total).  Get your blood levels checked and if they’re suboptimal (like two-thirds of U.S. residents) then start taking supplemental Vitamin D (at least 2K a day), or get 10 or so minutes of summer sun on large areas of bare skin, with no sunscreen.  Ten minutes a day shouldn’t burn your skin or raise your chance of skin cancer, and adequate Vitamin D levels may be protective against melanoma (the most dangerous form of skin cancer).

Of course, I’m not a doctor and you should consult your doctor before doing anything.  I’m just sayin’ …

BONE-BENDING EXERCISE

Perhaps you’ve experienced sleeping deeply after exercising hard.  But who really has the time or inclination to consistently exercise the recommended thirty minutes (make that at least an hour with the commute to and from the gym) every day?  Only those freakishly disciplined types … and this isn’t directed at them.  The question in my mind was as follows: could I improve the quality of my sleep by exercising approximately 1 minute a day?  The answer, for me, was a definitive yes.

Try this following right now.  Get up, find the nearest open stretch of street, path, or whatever, and sprint at full speed for about one minute.  Unless you’re sitting there reading this in a Puma tracksuit, you can simultaneously exercise your nonconformity muscles at the same time.

So, how do your legs feel?  (No, of course you didn’t do it).  But try it some time, without doing any other exercise that day, and see how it affects the quality of your sleep.  I’ve found that vigorously jumping up and down for one minute also does the trick.  Undignified, yes, but it helps build bone density and release growth hormone.

One thing that happens when you get enough deep sleep is that your sugar and carbohydrate cravings go way down (and the converse is also true; as little as three nights sleep deprivation can reduce insulin sensitivity to a degree that is similar to Type 2 diabetes).  This post is getting way too long so I’ll discuss my experience with drastically reducing my sugar and grain intake in Part III.

EDIT: The Willpower Part III post is going to cover another topic, but I did end up writing about reducing grain products and sugar here.

Willpower as a Commodity, Part I

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On January 15

In Metaprogramming

Willpower in action

I’m considering two metaphors for the concept of willpower; willpower as a commodity and willpower as a muscle.  I think the second metaphor is closer to the way that most people think about willpower.  Willpower is something that can be exercised and strengthened.  A person can toughen themselves up.  Try hard, and you get better at trying hard.

I think this view is mostly false.  Hard things get easier because you get better at them when you do them.  Skills that have a steep learning curve, that feel difficult when you’re acquiring them, aren’t going to feel hard for that long.  Why not?  You can’t have a steep learning curve without having a short duration.  If you keep at it, the hard feeling part will pass relatively quickly.

So is willpower a commodity?  Is it a raw resource, valuable, scarce, and non-renewable, with multiple potential applications?  I think this metaphor is much closer.  You can renew your willpower by sleeping, and to a lesser extent with breaks, pep-talks, and sugary snacks, but in a given day willpower is basically non-renewable.  Willpower can be drained by any number of innocuous-seeming tasks, anything that requires mental concentration, enduring the unpleasant, complex decision-making, or resisting temptation.  Answering complicated email, having to interact with people you don’t like, searching for the best airline ticket deal, trying to NOT eat that doughnut, making lunch for your kid when there’s no food in the house — all these things can drain your willpower quicker a bullet hole in a gas tank.

Some people seem blessed with an abundance of willpower.  They have incredible powers of concentration, they can stoically endure the most unpleasant conditions, easily stick to the most spartan of diets, effortlessly delay gratification, and regularly complete grueling exercise programs.

Other less fortunate souls struggle with attention-deficit-disorder and are defenseless against all forms of indulgence.  They have to gear themselves up to get the littlest thing done.  If there is cake, they will eat it.  If there is Scotch they will drink it.  If there is the internet, they will waste time on it.

People less naturally endowed with willpower might in fact be the luckier group.  If they want to achieve anything, they will quickly learn that they have to guard their willpower against theft and to conserve against waste.

Those born into the first group might stoically labor their entire lives, getting much done but achieving nothing, because they are never forced to develop good willpower management skills.

Personally I think I started somewhere in the middle (by nature and/or nurture) and I’m trying to better use my available willpower with smart willpower management.  So what do I mean by that?

IMO willpower management has two sides:

  • Stopping the Leaks
  • Doing What’s Important

I’ll cover both in my next post.

The Reward Is The Job – Do You Want The Reward?

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On January 11

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming, Music Business, Writing

Clubbers in Oslo

I’ve been thinking about “long-tail” careers and the people who pursue them (myself included).  For careers where there is no “average” success, “long-tail” describes the success curve distribution.  Most musicians, artists, writers, and athletes are never going to get much in the way of fame or fortune, while a few extremely lucky and/or talented individuals are going to get the lion’s share of the rewards.  So you don’t actually want to end up on the tail … you want to end up as high on the slope as possible (if fame and fortune are what you’re after).

My hypothesis is that the “rewards” of a successful long-tail career are mostly illusory.  If you generate a NYT bestseller or Top 40 hit or get picked up by a big league sports team, then of course you get paid and get famous, but what you really get is the JOB of being a professional writer or musician or ball player.  So you had better like the job itself; the day-in day-out nitty gritty of consistently performing at a high level.

About six years ago I fell into a long-tail career of being an electronic music DJ.  I had co-produced an album (Jondi & Spesh – The Answer) and our label (Spundae) arranged a North America DJ tour to help promote it.  The only problem was that I didn’t know how to beat-match (seamlessly mixing two songs together by adjusting the tempo and manually synchronizing the vinyl or CD’s).  Beat-matching is no longer a required DJ skill (these days laptop DJ’s can let the computer beat-match for them) but back in 2004 it was a non-optional part of the skill set.

Spesh arranged a “DJ boot-camp.”  For weeks he trained me in the mystical art of beat-matching.  Imagine a kung-fu training montage, but instead Shaolin monks with swords and spears, think of two white dudes in a studio garage with Technics 1200’s and Pioneer CDJ’s, drinking lots of tea.

The boot-camp worked, more or less.  At the end of training, my skills were not world class, but I could get away with mixing records in front of a nightclub crowd (and in most cases not clear the dance floor).  During that tour, Spesh pulled more weight behind the turntables, but we played some good shows.  Opening for James Zabiela at Circus in LA was especially fun.  Amazingly, we were well-paid for these gigs, stayed in the best hotels, and were ferried about in limousines.  Ridiculous!

You have to realize that most DJ’s “work their way up” with blood, sweat, and tears, and would kill to have the kind of opportunity that was handed to me.  It would be like playing a game of pick-up basketball and getting offered a position on the Lakers, without even having to try out.

On top of this incredible luck, Spesh and I had the additional good fortune of already running our own successful electronic music event in San Francisco (Qoöl).  Spesh, along with our talented residents and guests, had built up the crowd for years.  Returning from that first tour, I had a resident DJ slot to step into, along with an enthusiastic home-town crowd.  I took advantage of the opportunity, continued to improve my skills, and had a great time playing at our own party and at other parties around San Francisco.  Spesh and I (well, mostly Spesh) organized a European tour, and we played at clubs in London, Bristol, Hamburg, Berlin, Eindhoven, and Oslo.

Jondi & Spesh were even voted among the top DJ’s in San Francisco from Nitevibe’s popular poll for several years running.  For someone more comfortable in the studio behind a computer monitor than on a stage in front of a throbbing crowd, it was all somewhat unreal.

So, was I a DJ?  I was acting like one, and externally I was doing all the things a professional electronic music DJ does.  I was playing gigs, I was getting paid, I was writing and releasing dance tracks, I was listening to hundreds of free promo tracks emailed to me every week by hopeful producers and labels, and (along with Spesh) I was running my own record label and weekly electronic music event.  But I never really felt like a DJ.  I had no problem with the label manager or music producer roles (and still enjoy those), but the DJ role never really clicked.

I had gotten a glimpse of what the next level of success looked like, and it didn’t appeal to me.

I don’t like airports.  I don’t like sleep deprivation.  I don’t like crowds.  I don’t do any drugs except for the occasional nootropic.  I’m happily married and don’t want to chase club girls around.  I don’t adjust quickly to jet-lag.  I don’t like hustling for gigs.  And I don’t like listening to hundreds of bad dance tracks to find a few that I’ll feel good about playing out in front of hundreds of people.

In short, I’m ill-suited to handle any of the hardships of that career, or appreciate any of the rewards.

OK, that’s not altogether true.  DJ’ing is REALLY FUN. There’s nothing like playing great music in front of a great crowd when you’re in the flow.  But I’ve admitted to myself that I have no interest in “taking it to the next level” with that particular activity.  In fact, I’m going to take an extended break to focus on writing fiction and writing music and running Loöq Records.

I suppose it’s possible that if I had a run of success in one of those other areas, I might get disillusioned with all the hard work involved.  Maybe at that point I would run back to DJ’ing.  But I think I’m better suited to these other paths, especially writing.  I like working long hours in quiet solitude.  I like creating characters and worlds.  Revisions are difficult, but also satisfying.

I don’t know what the future will bring.  I’m going to keep writing every day and do everything I can to become a professional writer.  I would love to be able to write fiction for a living.  If it means getting up at six am every morning and locking myself in a room until I’ve written 2000 words, so be it.  That sounds like fun to me.

Semicolon Party

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On December 28

In Fiction Writing, Writing

Came across this sentence while reading Ilium by Dan Simmons:

The voynix padded out of the woods and a twilight view opened up: Ardis Hall glowing on its hilltop; white gravel paths and roads winding away from it in every direction; the long, grassy sward extending down from the manor house for more than a quarter mile before the greenway was blocked by another forest; the river beyond, still glowing, reflecting the dying light in the sky; and through a gap in the hills to the southwest, glimpses of more forested hills — black, devoid of lights — and then more hills beyond that, until the black ridges blended with dark clouds on the horizon.

Okay, give me a minute to count them.  Four semicolons.  Also a colon, two em dashes, and four commas.  Dan Simmons is rolling heavy on the punctuation on this one.  And I have to give bonus points for use of the word sward.

What’s my point?  I’m not sure that I have one, except that different authors have different punctuation styles, and that’s fine.  Dan Simmons is one of my favorite authors.  In more recent works, like The Terror, he’s more conservative with his punctuation (and uses shorter descriptive passages in general).  But I’m loving Ilium so far, and I loved Hyperion even though it’s downright florid in parts.

Kurt Vonnegut is famously quoted as saying semicolons are “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.”  I can see where he’s coming from.  The Simmons sentence above is more than my brain can handle in a single sentence (maybe it’s intended for mightier minds).  But it works in context.  And I like Simmons’s books more than I like Vonnegut’s books.

Maybe the sentence above is like turning up the amp to 11.  The music is so loud (and distorted) that you can’t hear the individual notes, but the wall of noise overloads your senses and has a strong impact on your mind.

My current writing guideline is to use no more than one semicolon per sentence.  I don’t hate them, like Vonnegut did.  They can really come in handy.  Vonnegut’s attitude towards semicolons strikes me as minimalist snobbery.  On the other hand, until I’m as experienced as Simmons (Ilium is his 22nd novel) I’m going to avoid using that much punctuation in a single sentence.  I might injure myself (or, more likely, the reader).

The Amy G. Method

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On December 27

In Metaprogramming, Relationships

My wife and I were talking today about how to call out your friends or family members on bad behaviors that drive you crazy, without making a huge issue out of it, or having to have a conversation.  Our good friend Amy G. has mastered a method that is effective without being injurious to the relationship.  Naturally we call it “The Amy G. Method.”

Her trick (which we try to copy whenever we remember) is to bring attention to the bad behavior at the very moment it is happening.  Somehow this circumvents any defensive programming on the part of the poorly-behaving individual in question.  The person can instantly recall/replay their own actions — there’s no denying they just did that.

One bad behavior I’m often guilty of is being over-controlling in the kitchen, especially when my wife is cooking eggs (so much so that I’ve earned the ignominious nickname Eggspert).  She recently caught me in the act and employed the Amy G. method.  I was caught red-handed, unable to deny my side-burner meddling.  Since then I’ve let her cook her eggs in peace.

For such a simple concept, it’s harder than you might think to consistently put it in practice.  I think that’s because we overestimate how often our friends and family members actually do the things that annoy us (the behaviors are so annoying, it seems they do them all the time).  So if you miss an opportunity, you might spend weeks waiting for someone to loudly slurp their tea, or tell you you look tired, or criticize your cooking, or offer unsolicited advice regarding how to raise your child.  And that’s not much fun …

But if you catch them in the act, and hit the right tone, then the Amy G. method can work beautifully.  It’s quick, it’s merciful, and best of all it’s light — an on-the-spot behavioral change request has a much lighter vibe than an hour long dissection of someone’s character (that’s probably going to dig up way too much stuff on both sides of the relationship).

So … thanks Amy G.  Still working on it.

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