Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! That, dear readers (I am e-gesturing to the picture above), is pink champagne cake. I promise you, it tastes better than I made it look. I am definitely a neophyte baker, and I am a terrible cake decorator, but I baked this yum cake for K. for Valentine’s on Monday. Yes, it has pink champagne (or pink prosecco in this case) in both the batter and the frosting. It adds an interesting, fruity tang which we both enjoyed.
So last week I told you I had started a new self-improvement project that involved nine weekly goals. I was inspired to do this after reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits. One of the main things I took from the book was to create small, forgiving goals that are relatively easy to accomplish. I chose a week’s time, and none of the goals have to be done every day, instead the goal is to do them one or more times each week.
Last week I talked about doing the verb and the noun will follow. That’s the principle here: if you want to be a person who exercises (the identity), you have to actually exercise. For almost 26 years, I had the Army telling me I had to exercise. Then one day it stopped telling me what to do. K. keeps me on track most of the time, but now one of my goals is to do cardio 5x per week, and do my weight routine 3x per week. And I am tracking it so that I don’t start telling myself I am being more compliant than I actually am. It’s super easy to feel like you have done more than you actually have. I know there were whole weeks where I might only do one weight routine, but felt like surely I had done two or three. Creating a little weekly calendar keeps me honest. Each time I accomplish one of my weekly goals, I log on to my Google Sheets app on my phone and mark it off on the day I did it. I am constantly aware of what I have accomplished and what is left for the week. It has been remarkably pleasing to mark these little things off. I think I get a little dopamine kick each time I tick one off now.
This is what the sheet looks like:
I copy this section of the sheet each week and add the new section to the top of the sheet. Eventually - maybe at week 8 - I will do a review and calculate some overall statistics to check my progress. This was a good week. I was able to read my two articles on Friday evening after I took this snap of the week’s progress, so it is officially all green, but you can see on any given day I am either red (<60% complete), yellow (60-99% complete), or green (100% complete). Having this quick stop-light system allows me to judge my progress at a glance and plan how I will accomplish the rest.
You can view my sheet here, and copy it for yourself if you want (including the stop-light formulae). As I write this (Saturday afternoon) everything is red for Week 7.
I am not suggesting that you should have the same nine goals as me. I’m not sure I will keep these same goals, or change them. I will probably add something. For example, I have a friend who is trying to listen to an audio book each week. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts all the time, but I am not counting those toward my goals. So it depends on what you want to accomplish, which depends on what is important to you. So the first step is determining what is important to you, and then the goals should flow from there. One thing Clear said in Atomic Habits was that setting specific outcome goals - like a specific weight loss target - tend to create failures because once you hit that goal, it's hard to maintain it. Instead you should focus on habits. So while I’m calling these weekly goals, they are really process measures, not outcome measures. If I do these processes week after week, the outcomes should follow.
More on this as I progress - I am thinking I will do a review after week 8 and determine whether I have the right mix.
What would you put on your spreadsheet? Would this work for you?
OK - now on to the links!
Read
What: MtVernon.org, The Death of George Washington
Why: Happy President’s Day! It’s George Washington’s birthday on Feb 22.
As I mentioned last week, I have been teaching an introductory course about the US Health Care System this semester. The textbook I use has a very negative narrative about how the US health care system evolved. The authors make a big fuss about how in Europe all the physicians went to college and studied the latest techniques, while in the US people could just hang out a shingle and declare themselves doctors.
I find this both wrong-headed and humorous. Through the 19th century, European medical schools were teaching medical theory based on the Hypocratic theory (dating back to Ancient Greece - 500BC) of the humors, which included such cutting edge treatments as bleeding people when they had a fever and giving enemas for depression.
George Washington had the good fortune of being treated by the best educated and most respected physician in America - and probably died of it. You probably weren’t any better off for being treated by a well-educated doctor in the 19th century (or before), and probably worse for it. You were probably better off with a witch doctor who only shook his rattles and banged on a drum.
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What: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer prices up 7.5 percent over year ended January 2022
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-prices-up-7-5-percent-over-year-ended-january-2022.htm
Why: The link leads to a chart showing a breakdown of the consumer price index (CPI) which is the metric generally quoted as “the inflation rate”. It breaks the CPI into subcategories such as food, energy, commodities (including medical care), transportation, etc. Interesting to look at. Medical care is up only a few percent; fuel oil is up almost 50%.
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What: Evil HR Lady, Dear Hiring Manager: Perhaps You Should Write the Thank-You Note
Why: The Evil HR Lady says hiring managers should write thank you notes to prospects who interview. There is something to be said for this! I actually did this once when I was doing a search and only looked at internal candidates. I had a very good response.
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Watch
What: James Clear, The 2 Minute Rule Will Quickly Change Your Life (2 min)
Why: In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m kind of sold on James Clear’s ideas. Here’s a 2 minute video about why the first two minutes of trying to start a new habit are the most important. Punch line: getting started is where you meet the most resistance. So set your goals low. That allows you to succeed quickly.
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Listen
What: The Splendid Table, Saving Rare Foods with Dan Saladino and M. Karlos Baca (50 min)
Why: (This is the podcast where I learned about the pink champagne cake.) Terrific discussion of the benefits of biodiversity and how our food system is so reliant on just a few plants. They talk about the fact that we basically only think of one type of banana, but there are actually some 1500 species of banana. When we lived in Hawaii we had an apple banana patch, so we have had some exposure to a different banana than the one we typically think of.
A few related thoughts:
Paolo Bacigalupi's dystopian Wind Up Stories series takes place in a near-future world where blights have afflicted all of our industrial crops and people are desperately looking for plants that are resistant.
Michael Pollan has written several books that address issues related to this. My favorite is probably the Omnivore’s Dilemma which makes the case broadly that we are biologically adapted to eat a wide-range of foods - which is contrary to what we see in our modern diets.
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What: Persuasion, Jonathan Sumption on the Limits of State Power (48 min)
Why: Jonathan Sumption, (AKA, Lord Sumption) is a British judge, author and historian. He is a former Justice of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and a frequent public commentator. This is a very interesting discussion comparing British and US constitutionalism, and whether democracy is fragile or robust.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso