Southend Pier

(Southend Pier is the longest in the UK, because the Thames Estuary is very wide and very flat, and the pier was to disembark passengers from the London boats. There's a train from the land to the end of the Pier. It's all pretty neat and way more chill than Brighton Pier.)

The Big Day was calling the council to come collect the bed. I have to get it into the front garden, so it's a good thing the mattress is a bit flimsy (though "orthopaedic") and the base is two boxes made out of wood that takes the weight but not if you stood on it directly. The decline in the quality of our lives is hidden in such details. I had to clear the hallway to get the bits down - because I was Thinking Like A Designer and planning ahead. I moved the bases and mattress into the hallway the previous evening, and woke up at 06:00 the next day to wrangle them into the garden, covering them with some plastic against a light shower. They collect between 07:00 and 15:00, and showed up at 11:00. I spent the afternoon clearing the back bedroom and laying plastic sheeting over the fitted carpet, before laying sheets over the plastic. Because I was going to put a second coat of white over the walls and ceilings. I'm not really a pro, but I have learned some of the tricks.

Regent Sound Studio, Denmark Street

 Also I want to read more. At the moment I read in three places: the train, in bed, or in my garden chair. If I try to read on the couch, I fall asleep within ten minutes. I read paperbacks and on the iPad, and I also read hulking art books that need to be on my lap, a table, or better still, a bookstand. This means I need to find chairs I find comfortable to read in that don't come from garden centres. Try it. I wound up Googling "reading posture" but all I got was the usual posture Nazi stuff about sitting upright with a straight back and the book held at head height. The same posture they recommend for using a keyboard. These people have never in their lives cut a line of code, written a paragraph of fiction, edited a photograph or anything else requiring thought. That advice is for people who spend all day typing other people's words. The moment the brain focuses on a difficult problem, it takes resources from un-important activities like, yep, maintaining posture. So I added in some trips to a local decent furniture store, as well as IKEA.

Regents Canal: Islington Tunnel to Kingsland Bridge

(This is a very pretty part of the canal, until about the A1200 bridge when the Council must change, because it's a bit scruffier.)

Think Like A Decorator wants you to think about what you want your house / room to say about you, and about what you're going to be doing in it. Socialising? Escaping the human race with a good book? Mostly Leslie Banker is socialising New York style - as we might expect - there's not a hi-fi listening room, a TV, or a computer gaming rig and chair in sight. Never mind, I can adapt the principles. I could also figure out what I thought was ridiculous styling, and thus what I might find acceptable. (You can't escape styling: you have so much as one plant in the house, that's an attempt at styling.) I realised I was trying to use one room to do too many things, and that a music listening room should be pretty much just that. It should not also try to be the room where I eat and do all my creative activities. That's why the back bedroom suddenly stopped being a bedroom. The guitars, piano keyboard and breakfast table are going there

Russell Square and Around

 

(Russell Square is right by a large chunk of Academic London: SOAS, Birkbeck, a Law Institute I didn't even know existed, Senate House, the UCL School of Pharmacy and Royal Free Hospital, with the LSE and Kings College down the road, and bits of UCL scattered all over the place.)

I have no innate talent for interior design, decoration and styling, but there are people who aren't professional designers who do. I have to read a book. The one that made sense to me this time around was Leslie Banker's Think Like A Decorator The pictures are pure decorator pornography, as in all those books, but the text is actually quite practical. At one point she explains that those photos are of rooms that have been re-arranged, styled to within an inch of their lives, and then had the power points, light switches and other intrusions Photoshopped out. But then there was the remark about thinking through the exact order you do things. For instance, when do you wallpaper the narrow corridor to a bedroom that needs a new bed moving into it?

Little Venice

(Little Venice is less than a mile from Paddington, and off Warwick Avenue. There are boat trips between it and Camden Town, which is why we were there.)

Another round of gratuitous catch-up. I've been deep in thought about re-jigging the back rooms in my house. I spend way too much time in one room, in one position, because hi-fi soundstage. The upstairs back bedroom dates from when I had lodgers, and I haven't had those for the longest time, but neither have I had anything else to do with the room, so it just stayed that way. Now I have an idea for what I could do in there, so it's time to move this, throw out that, buy a couple of those, re-paint the other and all that jazz.

Free Cinnamon Bun

 

Wendy Wood's Good Habits, Bad Habits

This book is about using the power of habit to change your lousy diet, infrequent exercise, your weight, and many other such things. The secret is said to be habit-formation: turning whatever it is you need to do into something that you do almost without thinking. By the psychologist's own definition, the essence of habit is thoughtlessness.(1)

It's Behavioural Science. Replication of experimental results is poor, and the experiments, often involving small groups of American college students, are, how does one say this? Lacking in gravitas?

A Behavioural Science experimental result typically sounds something like this: 60% of the people who tried The Hack did 10% less / more of Whatever, while the other 40% did the same amount. The conclusion of the writer of the best-selling book is that you should do The Hack, because it works.

Well, yes it does and no it doesn't.

It works for organisations with large customer / user bases (say, a hospital, or a retailer). Running a campaign featuring The Hack results in the equivalent of a 6% increase in customers when the campaign is running. If the campaign cost is low enough, that may well be worthwhile. There are plenty of parliamentary constituencies with a margin of less than 6%. The Hack could sway the result of the next election - if it's that kind of hack.

It is no use to you or me as individuals. We don't want something that works for just over half of us and then only 10% of the time. We need something that works for us, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (nothing's perfect). Alarm clocks, rather than putting the biscuits out of sight and leaving the fruit on view(2).

The assumption that what works on one scale (organisation dealing with a large population) will work on another scale (individuals) should have a name, maybe the Individuals-Are-Crowds Fallacy.

Hacks (bite-size bits of thought-lite behaviour suitable for habit-formation) can make it easier to achieve a goal: you can put your gym gear in the bag the previous day so you don't forget it in the morning rush. It's not going to lift the weights for us, though. We have to do that, and there are no hacks for making it easier. It's supposed to be difficult, or it isn't doing us any good.

Setting an alarm clock is a hack, and so is a To-Do List. You still need to follow-through: you could go back to sleep, and you could ignore the list.

How important are habits-and-hacks? The alternative is said to be willpower, which Behavioural Scientists say is a muscle that gets tired easily and recovers slowly. Except there never was any such psychological muscle.

One's will was an expression of a desired outcome (which is why legal Wills are called that) and by extension, one's will-power was one's constancy and determination to cause or achieve that outcome. Go too far with "willpower" and you wind up with "obsession", "stubborn-ness", and other Bad Things. Don't go far enough, and you're a quitter.

The important part is this: one is only expected to demonstrate it for something that matters, such as studying for and passing exams, defeating the Carthaginians, or losing enough weight so the insurance companies stop calling one "obese". No-one is expected to resist marshmallows, or keep their hand over a flame, except as a party trick.

Parents will go through years of sleepless night hell, sullen teenage hell, tired crying on the way home, hearing some Disney movie for the third time that week, and all sorts of other trials and tribulations, to raise their children. Because that matters. Excuse them if they put on a few pounds in the process.

People who are content with their lives and their physical, cultural, emotional and intellectual condition do not do things to change themselves(3). They do things they enjoy doing to enjoy being them.

People who do things to change their lives and themselves are in some degree ambitious or malcontent.(4) Maybe they noticed that all the senior female executives were blondes and decided to adopt the plumage. Maybe they looked at their gut in the mirror and thought "this can't go on". Maybe they just want to run the 10K a minute faster to be in the next class up. Maybe they saw their Saturday night drinking buddies from the outside that fateful evening, and realised what a bunch of losers they were. Maybe they thought that, at thirty, it was time to learn to drive. Or to stop with the late-night takeaways. Or whatever.

The Dirty Secret of making significant changes to ourselves and/or our lives is that it takes sustained effort, a sharp pair of social pruning shears, and motives that would scare the bejesus out of a therapist.

Somewhere in the margins of that is a place for hacky little habits: I like To-Do lists, but I don't get obsessive about completing them.

By all means flick through Behavioural Science best-sellers or even the academic research if you want to find suggestions for hacky little habits.

And if a Behavioural Scientist offers you a marshmallow now, or two in fifteen minutes' time... you're a busy grown-up: take the marshmallow now and keep the fifteen minutes for yourself.



(1) That's why "bad habit" is almost a tautology, and "good habit" is almost an oxymoron. 

(2) I've done that for years. Hasn't worked so far. Alarm clock works every time. 

(3) That doesn't mean they never move home, redecorate, or go to a different country on holiday each year. No matter where they are, they always take the weather with them. 

(4) There are also malcontents who don't do anything, also called whingers.