Internal Processing

I’ve never been much of a note-taker. Rather than spending meetings and discussions with my head down in a computer recording everything that’s said, I tend to let the information wash over me, trusting my memory to retain what’s important. Aside from specific event and task details, which do get written down in their prospective apps, I keep most things just up in my head.

I’ve also never much for project management. If I have something I need to do, I’ll put it on my task list with a due date, but only at a high level. Breaking items down into sub-tasks just doesn’t jive with how my brain works. I see the task is coming up, I think on it for a while, and then, when the time comes, I do it. This is true for tasks that take five minutes and ones that are long and complex, requiring several days or weeks to complete.

For whatever reason, I have a tendency to keep my processing internal. I absorb information, I let my brain do its thing with it, and then I output whatever needs to be done: work, writing, decisions. The entirety of the middle part happens in my head.

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to externalize more. It started when I switched to Bear for writing and note-taking, forcing myself to let it become a bit of a messy space without any expectations. If I’m thinking about a problem or planning an event, I create a note for it and just jot things down: ideas, issues, questions, things that need to be done. Tiny sub-tasks that would never make their way into Reminders suddenly appear and disappear in my notes as needed. Links, reference images, quotes, half-baked thoughts – they’re all there.

Though the habit is still in its formation stage, I think it’s working. There hasn’t been a huge shift in what I’m able to accomplish, but I do find that there are fewer lingering stray thoughts taking up space in the back of my head. By getting them out, I free up room to process only the most pressing matter at hand until I’m ready to move on to the next thing, pull up my notes for it, and get to work.

As someone who likes structure and tidiness, allowing a bit of messiness into my setup was a challenge at first, but I’m reaping the benefits now. Note-taking works. Who new?

My tendency to internalize is true not just of my relationships with data and devices, but with people as well. If I’m working through an idea or a feeling, my go-to approach is to keep it to myself for as long as possible. It’s not that I’m purposefully withholding anything; I just tend toward silent pondering, I guess.

But I’m trying to be more open with this sort of processing, too. As I’ve been reminded many times by friends and loved ones, I don’t have to carry things alone. People are happy and willing to listen, support, and offer guidance when needed. Like note-taking, expressing emotions can be messy; at the same time, it can be really helpful.

You may have noticed this site becoming more of a “feeling space” lately. That’s been a part of this new approach for me, and I’m grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my ruminations, including you.

Shifting my processing – whether it be for tasks, emotions, ideas, or anything else – outside of myself has been a refreshing change. There will always be a lot happening inside my head, but balancing that internal activity with some external expression is just what I needed.

Streaks Are Broken

Lex Friedman, writing at Lex on Tech about streaks in apps and games:

A streak is a loss-aversion machine you carry in your pocket. Every day you extend it, it gets a little more painful to lose, which is exactly why day 500 is harder to skip than day five. Apps with streaks aren’t building habits. They’re building hostages.

As someone who’s addicted to checkmarks, I feel the pain of being bombarded by streaks acutely. They’re everywhere, and they’re alluring.

I play six short games as part of my daily morning routine (Wordle, the Apple News+ Mini Crossword, Good Sudoku, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and Family Feud), and each one of them has some kind of streak mechanic meant to keep you coming back every day. They’re built into social media (thanks, Snapchat), fitness apps, and habit trackers. At one point, even my banking app encouraged me to build a daily streak of checking my balance by literally paying me to do so. (Joke’s on them; I would do that anyway because I’m a budgeting maniac.)

I believe there are specific instances where streaks can be beneficial, such as when you’re just starting to build a new habit and need all the motivation you can get. But before long, the point of any streak becomes keeping the streak alive, not actually improving your life or having fun, and that’s when they become a problem.

This is yet another example of companies trying to hack our natural brain processes for financial gain. Using positive reinforcement, they shift our motivation away from the initial intent (such as learning a new language) to a goal that benefits them (opening the app every day to continue the streak, thus boosting usage metrics and company profits). On the surface, it seems like a fun mechanic, and maybe that really is the intention behind some who implement it, but the impact is detrimental to users in the long run.

It was a hard-fought battle, but I’ve gotten to a place where I actively choose not to care about streaks of any kind. (The one exception is my 2,300-day Snapchat streak with my spouse, which in my heart of hearts I wish would break so I could get out from under the weight of it.) I ignore them as much as I can, and if I ever notice that I’ve broken one, I just move on and let it go without even looking for a loophole to restore it. I’ve had to do this for my own mental health; otherwise, I’d spend my days obsessively extending streaks that do nothing to make my life better.

This dynamic has also led me to cut down on the tracking apps I use. Habit trackers are amazing for forming new habits from scratch, but after a certain amount of time, any good habit tracker should render itself obsolete. If an action is truly a habit, you don’t need any external signal to perform it. At that point, tracking becomes all about streaks, and that’s where I say, “Thank you, next.”

Streaks aren’t required to have a successful app or business. I’m grateful for developers like Rebecca Owen of Chronicling who purposefully exclude streaks so users don’t feel pressured or guilty when tracking events. And I also appreciate what Florian Grossmann has done with On This Day, where streaks are available but can be hidden completely with a single toggle. I turned streaks off the day I downloaded it and haven’t been bothered by them since.

The fewer streaks in my life, the better. May it be so for each of us.

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My thanks to Lex for writing about this subject, which I obviously feel passionate about as well. If you haven’t yet, check out his new website, Lex on Tech, where he's doing some really interesting writing every day.

Phantom Stress

It’s a busy time of year for Apple fans and commentators. If past is precedent, we’ve got a lot to look forward to over the next two weeks:

• new iPhones, Apple Watches, and possibly other hardware announced this Wednesday
• online preorders for the new hardware this weekend
• major updates to the operating systems for every Apple product early next week
• new devices in customers’ hands and storefronts at the end of next week

That’s a lot to pack into such a short time period, and it’s part of why I enjoy this time of year so much.

Normally, all of this excitement comes with a ton of work for me. In addition to new iPhones, early September has to come to mean event coverage, visionOS review writing, and editing other OS reviews under short time constraints that have the potential to change as quickly as Apple can publish a footnote in a press release. In short, September used to be a whirlwind.

This year, the winds have died down. I’m not furiously writing chapters, sending off editing notes, testing last-minute beta changes, or outlining which parts of Apple’s announcement video I’ll have to take extra-detailed notes on. I’m just… getting ready to watch and react along with everyone else. There’s no stress at all.

So why is it that I’m feeling stressed all the same? As I read about the rumors and count down the days to the big event, I find there’s a pressure building within me, a feeling of urgency with no real source or outlet. It’s like there’s a voice telling me, “You’re missing something!” but I check my to-do list, and there’s nothing there.

I’m a naturally anxious person, so I’ve experienced this sort of thing before, but it’s been a while. This time around, I’ve put a label on it that I’m finding helpful: phantom stress. There isn’t actually anything wrong, but I’m used to being under a lot of pressure this time of year, and the gap between expectation and reality gets filled with worry and distress.

Basically, I’m stressing myself out about not having anything to stress about. Productive, right?

Maybe you’ve experienced something like phantom stress before. If so, you’re not the only one. It’s bizarre, and it’s ultimately pointless, but it’s human, too.

Our brains are amazing things that are far more capable than we often realize, and sometimes, that capability can have unexpected consequences. In my case, my brain is so used to running in overdrive this time of year that it’s searching for something to latch onto, some external deadline or task to direct its energy towards. That practical motivation may be missing, but the habitual energy is still there, spinning in circles, waiting for me to redirect it.

I guess that’s what I’m doing right now, writing this and forcing you to come along with me on such a meandering mental journey. Maybe this is my way of turning phantom stress into something positive – for me, at the very least, and hopefully for somebody else. Investing more energy into this little online space lately has been great for me on a lot of levels, and if a story I publish here does end up helping someone out there, then it’ll certainly all have been worth it.

Besides channeling my creative energy in a different direction, the other thing I’m trying to do is just take it easy on myself. It would be easy to beat myself up for wasting time on worrying for no reason, but I’m not sure that anyone’s ever shamed their mind into working better. The best thing I can do is recognize this feeling for what it is, remind myself it’s temporary, and do what I can to make something positive out of it.

Eventually, my mind will adapt to a new schedule, the sting of realizing things are so different will wear off, and I’ll feel lighter. I look forward to it. But even as I’m working through it all, I’m not going to let phantom stress keep me from enjoying a time that I truly love. I’ll carry on and lean into the strangeness of going into an event day on the sidelines. After all, there’s no time to fold to the pressure when there are so many exciting things to focus on.