Learn From My Mistakes

Short story of how I break life chaos into small, solvable problems - 3 min read.

I’ve been wrestling with a screenshot that’s been sitting in my Apple Photos for a few weeks.

I treat Photos like any other Inbox. It’s a temporary parking lot for stuff I’ll decide on later.

And no, I don’t keep photos or videos there long term.

My capture flow is simple:

• I see something inspiring and snap it.

• I hear a song I want for my run playlist, Shazam it, and screenshot.

• I read a good read on my iPhone or iPad, screenshot and crop to the juicy part.

• I catch my wife dancing when she thinks no one is watching and take a quick video.

Every so often I run Inbox Zero for Photos.

I keep what’s worth keeping and delete the rest. My ratio is about 50/50. If I don’t trash a lot, I wasn’t curious enough.

Kept items go into other flows before deleting:

• Quotes get OCR’d in Photos and pasted into Obsidian.

• Songs go to my YouTube Music “Run” playlist.

• Photos and videos worth keeping move to my local server with Immich. Terabytes of storage, no subscription fees.

• Receipts moved to a “Receipts” folder in Google Drive.

• Random inspiration lands in a swipe file for future use.

Most weekends I get back to zero. Except for this one screenshot.

It has one line:

I saved it to Obsidian on day one and cross-linked it to related notes, so it can find me later in my self-proclaimed “second brain.”

But I left the screenshot in my Photos Inbox on purpose, so I see it a few times a week.

Each time it pokes me: “Am I on track?”

My days run on different tracks:

• Mon to Sat: am I on track for the next newsletter? (Yes, it takes more than a “few hours” and a tasteful amount of salty tears.)

• Mon to Fri, mostly 8 to 5: did I come to work to work?

• Sat to Sun: what am I doing for recovery?

• Every day: am I on track with…

  • physical activity,

  • the house stuff,

  • family plans,

  • and my diet? (The one that tests my patience.)

Of course things go off script. The quote still asks: where am I finding time and energy for my current priorities?

Not long ago I took it a step further and questioned what my primary tool for living is.

As a classic white-collar human, my quality of life follows the quality of my decisions.

1. Better decisions need better thinking.

2. Better thinking needs practice.

3. Practice needs time.

A quick postmortem of the last few months revealed two main modes:

Reacting: firefighting 8 to 5, answering pings and demands.

Distracting: feeding the brain with content, music, and hobby tinkering for easy dopamine.

Time for a fix.

I started small and tested a “no iPad in the kitchen” rule for the last month.

At first, FOMO was loud. YouTube’s algorithm is a siren with perfect pitch.

Then it hit me: trying to keep up is like filling a teacup with a pressure washer. I retained less than 10 percent of what I gulped.

It shifted me to “meh, I want it but I don’t need it.”

Chewing in silence suits me. Novel, I know…

Next, I borrowed from Bill Gates and his think weeks, then added Steve Jobs’s walking meetings.

Simple move: walk without headphones. Which leaves my ears and brain without the usual “delicious” podcasts and audiobooks.

My go-to route is a 6.3 km lake loop that takes around 58 minutes. Apple Watch keeps me honest. (Yeah, tempo, baby, tempo!)

If I get in three walks a week (the walking pad stole some outdoor time, not the movement) it stacks with the solo lunches to roughly 7 to 8 hours a week.

Pretty much a workday of thinking.

Can’t promise quality, but I’m putting in the reps.

(Feel free to check my math; it’s 6:30 a.m., the sun is rising, and I’m heading out for a silent walk.)

So where does productivity fit?

Laura Mae Martin in Uptime puts it simply:

• When you know exactly what you want to do.

• When you set aside the right time and place to do it.

• When you finish it within the time you gave it.

By that standard, I think it counts.

On my good days, I hit all three.

Till next time.

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