Sarah Wilson

sunday life: can self-monitoring make me a better person?

by

This week I try self-tracking with a bunch of iphone apps

2011-01-26_1725

A few years ago in New York I interviewed a bunch of women who’d taken it upon themselves to track their entire lives  – via video cameras attached to their heads – so that you and I could follow online their every move. Ablutionary and otherwise. And in real-time. Wow!

These “life casters” – glossy, 20-something self-marketing machines with indulgent shoe collections – told me, like, this is the future, babe. I was perturbed and put it down to a ghastly fad. But I’ve been proven wrong. In the past few months the “self-tracking movement” has indeed gained momentum.

I swear, any moment now you’ll be bludgeoned by this 2.0 phenomenon of using various apps, sites and gadgets to log, track and analyse the minutiae of one’s life. Tim Ferriss, he of The 4-Hour Workweek mega-fame, is a self-tracker and has just published a new book, The 4-Hour Body, all about it. It went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list last month (Dec). Ferriss has tracked his every workout and blood test for the past decade and used this data to develop his extreme weightloss theories. The QuantifiedSelf.com, an online community that shares the latest tracker developments, launched an Australian chapter last year, and newer, shinier apps are being launched daily.

Now I concede my tone thus far into this week’s exploration has a distinctly skeptical flavour to it. I’ll henceforth try to be more Swiss vanilla as I outline the benefits of self-tracking. Some self-tracking is out and out (over)sharing. Daytum.com and DataLogger allow you to upload what you ate for breakfast, the streets you passed or (in one case) a list of your irrational fears (in said case: 136). The data is then displayed in glorious graphs for others to check out. Dailymugshot.com sees more than 1000 people a day upload shots of themselves. They then share their archives with others. Just for pervy fun. I find something quite sweet about this. It’s a moment in reaching out, of bearing witness to each other’s lives. Sometimes we do just want to know we’re not the only one who gets pimples between the eyebrows on hot days.

Read more

and the winner is….Ann!

by

Thank you all of you for putting your hand up for the Same Sky bracelet from Kindred Gifts. There can only be one winner as drawn from my Tupperware lunchbox just now…this time it’s Ann Penhallow…a marriage celebrant who lives in Canberra (from what I can tell from your site, Ann). Ann shoot us an … Read more

continuing the single women v single men debate: who should take the driver’s seat?

by

On Tuesday I posted about how and why pursuing career puts women on the back foot when it comes to love and partnering. Ergo stacks of “successful” women are single.

tumblr_l82izs29211qza249o1_400

I made all kind of generalisations about male-female behaviour – which I don’t back away from. Many of you made a lot of great comments. The topic will always fire up debate. It’s juicy and real and we don’t really have answers. So we speculate and dig around.

Darren Saunders on Twitter alerted me to this Slate article – The Eligible Bachelor Paradox – which adds another crusty layer to the debate. It answers a few of the point some of you raised. It uses game theory to explain why there are more hot single smart women in their 30s than hot single smart men. As the writer says….

The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn’t there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?

He concludes, no. Here’s why:

He explains it in terms of auction bargaining power – “Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no. The structure of the proposal is not, “I choose you.” It is, “Will you choose me?” A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked…

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

Read more

my dilemma with gifts…and a resulting gift giveaway for you

by

I’m struggling at the moment. With being given things (yeah, yeah, poor me!).

I’ll come clean with you all. I get sent some very lovely gifts by strangers daily. Some of these strangers are wanting me to promote their wares. Others are genuinely spreading their eagerness for something they really care about. Others are simply giving to say thank you.

need-to-want-by-erin-hanson

But thing is, I’m not a big fan of things. I grew up this way. And I like living this way. Less makes me happier. It’s not a pious statement to the world. Just a preference borne from habit. Anyone who knows me knows I wear the SAME clothes over and over. And am not one for caring about handbags. Or nailpolish. Or scented candles. Or new bikinis. Or whatever. I just don’t derive joy or excitement from them. It’s a different language to me.

Which makes it hard when I’m given things. I’m grateful for the care and gesture. But feel guilty. Because sometimes the thing (not the gesture!) is just wasted on me. So. From Now On… When someone gives me something because they’re genuinely wanting to spread their eagerness…I’m going to share the love with you instead. Not in an Oprah way. More because it’s doing me a favour.

Let’s kick off with this crocheted glass bracelet…

Read more

Tuesday eats: some more smooth morning smoothies

by

Last week I posted on what I was eating for breakfast, and asked for your favourite recipes to help make mornings smoother. So you fly out of bed!tumblr_l55vlm3gMA1qax2aqo1_400

Here they are below. I should just note that for me, mixing different fruits in the one meal ain’t great . General wisdom is that it causes bloating because different fruits take different amounts of time to break down in the gut (so it means enzymes are used up by the most easily digested, leaving the rest to ferment a touch). Also, I advise not eating toooo much fruit in general in the morning – it’s full of sugar and gets the metabolism off to a high GI start. Some berries or half a banana is best! IMO.

Also, I advise using full cream normal milk, as opposed to soy or processed substitute milks. Yoghurt with coconut water is best. Again, IMO. Full fat? Yep, it’s needed to activate leptin, the “I think I’m full now” hormone, in our brains…so we don’t go hunting for toast at 10am.

My favourite is this one from Aaron at Origin of Energy. These guys really know their stuff (they’re a personal training gym/kitchen/shop/lifestyle school all in one; you’ll hear more about them soon). I drop in on my way to work and grab one of these:

Chocolate Coconut Smoothie

  • 1 Virgin coconut
  • 2 Eggs
  • 10g Raw Cacao
  • 10g Coconut oil
  • Stevia 1/8 teaspoon

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend on high for 30 seconds

*Always put the coconut oil in just before you blend so it doesn’t turn solid in the cold milk. During the winter months you may have to melt it on a gentle heat before you put it in.

*You can use honey instead of Stevia and add fresh & or frozen banana

*To make caffeine free substitute cacao for 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.

Blue Berry Yoghurt Smoothie

  • 250ml Kefir or Paris Creek Yogurt
  • 2 eggs
  • 50g Blueberries
  • 1 Tablespoon Coconut oil
  • 1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Cinnamon
  • Stevia 1/8 teaspoon

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend on high for 30 seconds

2. Serve in cup with a sprinkle of fresh Cinnamon on top

*Always put the coconut oil in just before you blend so it doesn’t turn solid in the cold milk. During the winter months you may have to melt it on a gentle heat before you put it in.

Read more

why having a good career leaves women single: explained with a study

by

I wrote about the “special problem of intelligent women looking for love” a little while back. It picked up on what a lot of us are noticing. That women, despite being informed to the contrary, can’t have it all – career, kids and a frightfully successful career. Mostly because it means doing it all. Which is killing us. But also cos it’s disrupting age-old male-female, ying-yang dynamics.

40674_1_468cI look around my ‘hood. Things are weird. This is what it looks like:

* lots of hot women with super careers in their 30s (at their career peak) who are single. And who’ve been single for yonks. Yep, they left settling down until after they got their career sorted…but that’s only part of the problem. Cos surely men were doing the same? And are in the same position? But, no….

* men haven’t so much disappeared as, well, changed their tactics. Around me, there are lots of single hot men in their 30s/40s… on dating frenzies, not wanting to settle down. Cos they don’t have to. Why? They have 20934 single women lunging at them, 20-year-olds through to women in their 40s. They’re Peter Pans. With too many options. They don’t have time to think about settling and committing. The frenzy of women in their immediate orbit is too distracting. Men are distracted easily by this kind of frenzy.

* BUT these men aren’t happy because they’re not being real men. They’re denied the opportunity to pursue, to go after the woman they reckon is perfect for them. That’s because they’re being pursued by women. Why? Cos everything is out of whack (women are used to chasing things and get impatient when men don’t approach, but also because the men aren’t pursuing.. cos they don’t have to….and it goes around and around). And so men feel emasculated by this. Because men are meant to be the hunters.  The peacocks who do dances and display their prowess to women, to earn female trust and affection. Since the cost of partnering is higher for women, they must be fussier and sit back and weigh up their options. This is a biological imperative.

* women are equally defeminised by these contemporary shifts. Because they don’t get to be the pea-hen, pursued and courted and desired.

And so we are in gender-lock. As an old guy who does yoga down the beach in the mornings at the same time as me said last week, “It’s like men and women today aren’t even seeing each other”.

It’s true. We’re not.

Because we’re not in our feminine/ masculine power. We’re outta whack.

Anyway, a new American book “Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying” has just come out and is adding to the debate. It says:

Women are going ace-guns in their careers…but this success has come at a great cost to women’s sexual bargaining power. The upshot: we’re not pursued by men…we now do the pursuing, which tips the relationship power to men…which is not a good thing. Women should be holding the cards. It works better this way.

Read more

Sunday Life: a *really* effective way to get rest (and heal)

by

This week I try Intentional Resting

77118_3_468

There’s always been something about me that inspires a reflexive need in others – even complete strangers in Medicare queues – to tell me to relax. When you’re not a relaxed person, being told to “Hey, just relax” is like being a leopard and ordered to not have spots. And prompts a largely unrelaxed response. “I DON’T DO RELAXED!” I once yelled at a smug ‘lax pusher. “EXCITED, MOTIVATED, FOCUSED, YES! BUT RELAXED JUST ISN’T PART OF MY EMOTIONAL REPERTOIRE…OK!?”. (Apologies for the loud caps, BTW). I only just restrained myself from pointing out that their suggestion was akin to my telling them to “Hey, fire up and get interesting”.

But slowly, over the years, I’ve released the pressure valve. I was forced to after an adrenal collapse four years ago (although it took a while to get the full gist of the idea; my initial attempts involved climbing Machu Picchu and moving to New York).  In the past few months I’ve turned the decompression dial down even further. I’ve been learning to rest. Rest is a bit like relaxed, but even better.

We all need to learn to rest. We’re certainly all tired. Arianna Huffington argues tiredness is an epidemic and was responsible for the GFC. But sleep alone isn’t enough for maintaining even basic health argues Dr Matthew Edlund, author of The Power of Rest. We’ll get eight hours and still feel like we’re dragging our sorry bums through quicksand. We need to rest as a state of being. Because for most of us our default state of being is frenetic, toggling, never-ceasing activity. We force our way through roadblocks, control outcomes and resist the natural flow of things. So much resistance and… egghhness… is tiring to the core.

When things don’t work out, we force harder. I read that when things don’t work out for animals they curl up and rest. And perhaps try again in a bit.  Funnily, I read this just before heading off last week for a few days break in the Byron hinterland. It rained. And rained. I couldn’t surf. Or bushwalk. So I curled up and rested. Reading in a hammock is resting. A rare afternoon nap is resting. But since I had the time – and was completely, right-down-to-the-calluses-on-my-big-toe  buggered from the year that was – I sunk into the topic deeper to find the best way to really rest.

Which is how I came upon Intentional Resting, a technique developed by Dan Howard after years of trying to find a simple tool “even truck drivers can use”.

Read more

the most useful grammar post ever

by

I thought you might find this useful. A list of grammar tricks I found on Dumb Little Men…They’ve compiled a bunch of tips and exercises from an online writing lab.

tumblr_l8pyewwwX51qza249o1_400

I know so many from my generation simply didn’t learn grammar. I personally learned it when I studied French from a library text book while working in a pub in London when I was 18. Then, a few years later I did a journalism cadetship at the Herald Sun in Melbourne. I got obsessed by misplaced modifiers. Mostly I’ve just practiced and checked and got things wrong and been horrified when I’ve seen it in print and learned the hard way.

I’ve also developed pet hates. Like misplaced modifiers. And your’s. Or when your not concentrating and you are found out.

What get’s on you’re goat?
Adjectives and adverbs

Nouns

Prepositions

Tuesday eats: what I’m eating for breakfast right now

by

Someone asked me the other day to do a post on what I eat. In general. So I’ll start with breakfast.

tumblr_l7mcmjP6Ts1qbycdbo1_500

I get up. I drink about 1-2 litres of hot water with either a squeeze of lemon or a dash of apple cider vinegar. Then I exercise etc. Then I eat. I’m simply not hungry for about 1-2 hours after I rise. Then it’s ON!

I mix it up a bit (porridge with sheep’s milk yoghurt and activated nuts; poached eggs and spinach, a few slices of millet bread with turmeric and cashew butter-$2- from Suveran as I ride to my office) But I’ve been filming a lot lately and it’s summer and my stomach as been a bit crook… and the below kind of caters to all of it. It’s portable, cooling, and allows me to whack in a few gut supplements.

Every morning I make sure I get a good dose of protein and FAT! If I don’t, I go searching for sugary carbs by about 10am.

my good-for-your guts breakfast smoothie

You’ll need:

* A stab mixer (don’t bother with blenders – too much equipment that you have to wash)

* handful of frozen berries or 1/2 a frozen banana (I buy when on special, peel and store in a zip-lock bag, then break into chunks to blend).

* 1/2 cup-ish yoghurt or kefir (I make my own or buy Meredith sheep’s milk yoghurt…less lactose and a great consistency; but I ALWAYS use full-fat. Why? Read here).

* 1/2 cup-ish  coconut water (fresh from the nut is best with the flesh tossed in, too,  or I like the Beyond one or the one that comes in a 500ml Tetrapak. Coconut water and flesh is extremely nutritious and an amazing electrolyte).

Read more