70

Work's back in full force, which has been interesting from a digital balance point of view. I know a lot of people who can't disconnect, have to check their emails and social media inboxes at all times, that sort of thing. I'm not one of them, these things don't stress me out like they used to. From a digital balance standpoint, going back to work from the summer holiday made little difference.

Don't get me wrong, I get plenty stressed by other things at times. Just like with the end of the year and its "we have to get this done now" nonsense, a lot of clients want to kickstart the autumn with deliverables. There's a difference between these periods of time because people come back somewhat energized from their summer breaks, whereas they just want to get things done by the winter holidays at the end of the year. Funny thing is, it always tapers off after the initial rush, so January and February are usually calm, and while the same might not be said by late September and October, it's back to business as usual at least.

I guess these stressful periods could be even more so if you were glued to your phone and had to check it when you wake up in the middle of the night, but I'm not that person.

69

Hi!

I've been continuing the Digital Balance challenge, and come to the realization that not many people call me. As in, call me from a normal, actual phone number. Not FaceTime or a voice call through Telegram or Signal, just a typical phone call.

Only three calls, really?!

Issue 68

What is digital balance anyway?

Hey there! 👋

It's been a minute since the last letter, hasn't it? I decided to take summer off to figure out what to do with Bored Horse, and my online presence overall. Then I heard about the Punkt Digital Balance Challenge, and I just had to do it, so here we are.

67

Sleep tracking cycle

I’ve been tracking my sleep, on and off, for the last fifteen years. It started with a revelation: I thought I slept poorly but really didn’t, which changed my mood in the morning. It has felt useful ever since. To be fair, said revelation was probably enough, but my curiosity was piqued.

Sleep tracking tools has come and gone. For a long time, I thought that Jawbone’s bracelet models were the ideal form factor. They were not the best, but they had a feature that none other, save smart watches, has: A reliable alarm clock. When you sleep next to someone else but want, or more likely need, to get up early, a garish alarm going off isn’t particularly nice. Waking up by vibration on your wrist however, that’s limited to disturbing just you. I’ve missed that, so much that I used my Apple Watch as a sleep tracker and alarm for months. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for it at all. Not only does it mess up overnight charging, it’s also uncomfortable to sleep with a watch. That’s what the bracelet type sleep trackers got right: They weren’t horrible to wear in bed. Not ideal, not by a long shot, but a lot better than a bulky watch. I stopped wearing the Apple Watch to bed a couple of months ago.

66

Minimizing

I've been looking at all my personal stuff to try to minimize a bit. My brother did that the hardcore way, moving to Greece with what he could fit in a carry-on. He sold the rest, stored just about nothing, and that's that.

It's a compromise, only owning what you can carry. I'm not willing to go that far, but looking through all the stuff I've got, I want to cut back. What I'll keep are things that really mean something, or are necessary for whatever reason. Spark joy, and all that jazz, you know. It's not a bad way to look at ownership, asking yourself if the item in question makes you happy or not, Marie Kondo hype be damned.

65

A change of pace

This is going to be a short one. After speaking to some friends, and looking at everything I have on my plate, as well as what I actually want to do, I’ve decided to switch some things up. It’s healthy to question the state of things at regular intervals, it’s all too easy just going about with whatever it is you’re doing.

I’m going to switch things up with this letter.

64

The allure of nostalgia

I bought a gaming rig late last year, to play Starfield properly. It’s a game I’ve been looking forward to since its announcement. As a fan of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls games, and Mass Effect, this felt like it could be a nice open world mix, in space.

Total time spent with Starfield: 42 minutes.

63

The headset lockout

I've been reading the Apple Vision Pro reviews with interest and trepidation. There's no doubt that it's a technical marvel, and there's no doubt either that it's very much a first generation product. Apple does those well, they iterate, and suddenly things are great. Case in point: Apple Watch, or the iPhone for that matter.

Apple Vision Pro is surely no different. It's not where it can, nor should be yet, but it will be, some iterations down the line. I think it'll succeed, although it's too early to tell if it's an iPhone, Mac, or iPad level of success. It might not even get close to either of them, thus failing by Apple standards. If you look at the market for VR headsets, which isn't exactly what Vision Pro is but definitely competing with them, it becomes clear that whatever the spatial computing market is going to be needs to be a lot bigger.

62

Text files are forever (possibly)

I've written about the benefits of plain text plenty of times, so when I stumbled onto Steph Ango's essay File over app, it was a bit of preaching for the choir. Ango is, of course, known for the popular notes app (or whatever you want to call it), Obsidian.md. That made the essay even more interesting since it clearly states that readable text files are better than apps. Obsidian.md uses files, so that makes sense, but it got me thinking.

Today, we can still open and read text files created in the early days of computing. Sure, there might be some encoding nonsense going on, but that's easy enough to fix, and a problem of the past thanks to established standards. It's a bit like HTML, the language that websites are built with: The standards makes it more future-proof than anything that requires software to run. Just look at all the Flash experiences we lost when Flash was deemed, and rightly so, a Bad Way to do things, and thus made obsolete.

61

Was it a good year?

Happy New Year!

At least on this we can agree, I’m sure. It is a new year, and while the word ”happy” stands out a bit, it’s what I’m wishing you, so it’s technically correct.

60

The ease of things

When I had a commute to the office years ago, I often found myself reading on my iPhone. Nothing weird about that, the same was true for everyone else on the train. Noses down, peering at a small screen. That’s the normal state of things these days. I did the same, but I shouldn’t have. You see, there was always an iPad in my bag, easy to access, and yet almost never used, for no reason other than the phone being easier to pick up. It was, after all, in my pocket.

• Time to pull out phone and get lost within apps: 1-2 seconds.
• Time to unzip bag, pull out iPad, and get lost within apps: 5-6 seconds.

59

The quest for the ultimate setup

I, like so many others, is always tinkering with my setup. It can get smarter, faster, lighter, stronger, more versatile, better looking, more inspiring – the list goes on. The idea is that the perfect setup will make you more productive. It’ll make you a better writer, your designs will pop even more, any kind of editing you do will be oh so snappy.

It’s bullshit, obviously. Changing your setup can certainly bring improvement, but unless you’re the kind of person who uses things until they break down, it’s likely the upgrade isn’t ground-breaking. More likely, it’ll just make things a little nicer for you for a bit, while the dopamine hits, and then you’ll start to think about how you could improve your setup even more.

58

An unscheduled break

I've been ill just about all week. Monday was sort of fine, no planned work, with picking up the new car as the only thing on the agenda. I woke up with a racing heart on Tuesday, and while that's nothing new, I just felt something was off. So, I decided to take a couple of days off, and luckily, this coincided with a downperiod at Hedengren Agency (we're waiting for feedback on a report). This in turn led to my first week truly off in years.

I feel better now, but there'll be no essay this week, just the links. I even managed to put my projects aside to rest up, which I'm particularly proud of. That is also why there's no essay this week. Plenty of things to read, though.

57

Clutter

I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter lately. The Considering today project is, in part, born out of these thoughts. I felt the need to focus my thinking, and to practice doing so each day, and thus, the project was born.

You see, clutter isn’t just things overflowing on your desk, it’s in your mind, too. I’ve seen various coaches and know-it-alls describe clutter in a lot of ways, some more grounded than others. To me, clutter can be:

56

I tried an analog calendar

A while back I needed to keep track of, well, things. I didn’t want to use my normal calendar, but the actual day mattered, and I didn’t want to rely on me remembering to actually update a text file. I could’ve solved this a ton of ways, but I happened to have a Field Notes calendar notebook nearby. So I figured, what the hell, and gave it a go.

There’s something inherently nice with paper calendars. I remember getting my first Filofax (modular calendar system) when I went to school, and it was my ever-present notebook for several years. It wasn’t particularly good as a notebook, but getting add-on pages to the ring-bound Filofax was a lot more attainable for a poor school kid than getting a Moleskine in the local bookstore.

55

Notifications need a reboot

I’ve had it with notifications.

The idea is good: A service and/or app will tells you about important things. For example, food delivery app Foodora lets you know that your food is on its way, that it’s getting close, that it’s sitting outside your door. That’s good.

54

Daring to age

The new Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds, got me thinking, perhaps not the way they intended. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice album with some catchy songs, but I couldn’t help but notice what’s not on there.

Mick Jagger’s voice.

53

Home spaces

I'm not disciplined enough to be able to create anywhere. For example, I've written a lot over the years, but barring some technical editing, I've never been able to do any of it in my office. That's not because the office isn't a creative space – it most certainly is when it comes to digital art, design, and development – I just can't do any writing at the same desk.

Which is why I write at home, as many of us do. Now, I live in an apartment in central Stockholm with my wife and the bonus kid, and there's just no way to have an extra room there. I don't have a door to close to my writing space, is what I'm saying. It's also, typically, the most common advice to aspiring writers: Get your writing space, with a door that you can close. There's a reason for that, as many of you probably get.

52

I barely use my phone anymore

Whenever I see someone using a large phone, I get that twinge.

Maybe I should get one of those? It’s a nice compromise, part phone and part tablet, almost.

51

A bunch of links

I’m afraid I’ve had a week, I’m not quite well, and I haven’t gotten enough sleep. Poor me.

Seriously though, my essay on home spaces that I’d planned for Sunday just isn’t ready yet. And, as you might know, it’s Monday too, so I wasn’t even able to get this your way on time. Sorry about that.