Honey

Given the crazy prices in NYC stores, I do most of my shopping online. Amazon Prime, in particular, has been a lifesaver, as something like a bag of dog food costs about 50% less there than it does at the PetCo in my neighborhood.

But when shopping on Amazon, I’ll often find several vendors selling the same thing at different prices, so I spend a fair amount of time searching around the site to make sure I’m getting the best deals.

Similarly, when I’m buying from any other site, before I check out, I Google around for potential coupon codes, then try them out on my cart. Though that, too, takes a bit of time, I can often save 10-15%, and I’m cheap enough for that to justify the effort.

Over the weekend, however, I discovered Honey, a great Chrome extension that does both of those things automatically. Now, I can save minutes and save money.

On Amazon, Honey will mark a given item as the best-priced version of that product, or link you across to a cheaper iteration of the same thing.

And, elsewhere (say, JCrew, PsPrint, or Intuit), it will test out coupon codes for you behind the scenes at checkout, automatically entering the one that gives you the largest discount.

It’s a small tool, but one that (especially if you shop mostly online) can add up to big savings. Try Honey, and save some time and money yourself.

Process, Results

With February just around the corner, we’re about to hit The Big Resolutioner Fall-Off in gyms the world over. Statistics show that, after a month, more than 50% of people have already given up on their New Year’s resolutions, and by the first week in February, gym attendance drops precipitously from its January peak to the lower leves seen through the balance of the year.

Obviously, people give up on their resolutions – and their fitness resolutions in particular – for a slew of reasons. In most cases, however, there’s a single, over-arching cause: after a month of full-bore effort, most people don’t feel like they’re getting results that justify the effort.

Sure, there are more or less effective ways to improve your fitness. But body recomposition (losing fat and gaining muscle) is slow going in even the best of circumstances; research by the CDC and others has shown that people who sustain weight loss (rather than just yo-yoing back up) are those that lose about a pound a week. And as most people who take up exercise again after a break initially add muscle as well as losing fat, it’s pretty common to see scale weight only drop a pound or two over the course of a first month, even with strong, consistent effort.

When most people set goals (like New Year’s resolutions), they think in terms of results: “I want x to happen by time y.” For project goals – starting a company, buying a home, etc. – that makes sense, as you can then break those goals down into a series of sub-goals along the way, and chart your progress by seeing how well you knock off those projects. But losing weight (like, say, learning a language) is more of a process goal; it doesn’t break down well into smaller goals, but is instead just about doing the same thing, consistently, for an extended period of time. Worse, process goals rarely achieve linear results; instead, progress usually fluctuates up and down, like prices on the stock market, even while the overall trend moves in the right direction over time.

So evaluating process goals by their short-term results is a fast track to feeling demoralized and giving up. Instead, people who succeed tend to be those who make the process itself the goal: they evaluate their success not based on how much weight they lose, but on the percentage of their weekly meals they eat according to plan, or the number of times they work out in a given week. The always-insightful Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) talks about this as the difference between ‘systems’ and ‘goals’ – the goal being weight loss, but the system being eating healthfully and working out.

In my experience, that kind of system-focused thinking is far more effective, because it’s much more self-reinforcing. If you’re solely focused on results, in a given day, you’re unlikely to see enough physical change to feel good about yourself; but if you’re focused on process, on executing your system, every healthy meal, every trip to the gym is something about which you can pat yourself on the back.

So, if you’ve been pushing hard through January, but are feeling a dit demoralized, and on the brink of giving up, I’d strongly suggest you switch your thinking to a systems / process approach instead. Ask yourself which habits you could sustain at an 80% level or better over the balance of 2017 would make a real difference. Maybe it’s walking 10,000 steps daily, cutting out refined carbs, or hitting a gym class three times a week. Then start evaluating yourself, day by day, just on how well you hit those habits. Maybe even buy a calendar, and draw in a smiley face for each day you pull them off.

In all honesty, that still won’t move you faster along the slow path to weight loss, fitness, or health; but it will hugely increase the odds that you keep going throughout the balance of the year, in a way that will allow you, one cumulative step at a time, to actually reach those goals in the end.

Movies 2.0

From the always-excellent Daring Fireball:

Natalie Jarvey, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:

“Amazon has not only scored its first Oscar nominations with Manchester, it has also become the first streaming service to earn a best picture nod. Manchester received six total nominations, including Kenneth Lonergan for directing and original screenplay, Casey Affleck for lead actor, Lucas Hedges for supporting actor, and Michelle Williams for supporting actress. The Salesman, Iran’s selection in the foreign-language film category — which Amazon is distributing in the United States — also received a nomination, bringing Amazon’s total nominations to seven.”

Amazing success story for Amazon. There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade or so that Hollywood was wary of Apple doing to them what the entertainment industry thinks they did to the music industry. In the meantime, Netflix and Amazon are kicking their asses.

I spent the first third of my career in the tech industry, and the next third in film, so I saw from the inside the disdain that both of those worlds have for each other.

Tech entrepreneurs long believed that they could bring across their industry’s tools, ideas, and processes, rethinking how film and television is made and distributed to yield better content and broader audiences.  Whereas the studio execs believed those tech folks were hopelessly naive, and totally out of their depth.

Looks like we now know which side was right.

Fighting Trump: What Do I Do Next?

This past weekend, I was proud to take part in the NYC Women’s March. Had I been alive at the time, I know I would have wanted to join the 1963 March on Washington, and I suspect we’ll look back on this weekend’s event similarly from decades in the future.

Because I fell behind on podcast listening over the weekend, I got to hear, in a single day, several politically-focused shows covering the inauguration, some recorded before the march, and others recorded after. From that juxtaposition, the power of the protest was immediately clear: before, anyone opposing Trump sounded despondent, somewhat in shock, unable to do anything but mope; after, anti-Trump’ers seemed buoyed up with hope and enthusiasm, ready to make change happen.

But while the march clearly rallied the troops, I don’t think it will make change in and of itself. We now need to channel that renewed energy into concrete action, in ways that are likely to create real and meaningful change.

To that end, I was heartened to discover recently two excellent websites that provide specific guidance moving forward.

The first is Swing Left, which seeks to shift control of the House in 2018 by focusing national Democratic attention on a handful of swing districts, where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Put in your zip code, and the site will point you towards your nearest swing district – in my case, New Jersey's 5th, just across the Hudson River. Then pop in your email address, and you’ll be intermittently pinged (not more than once weekly) with opportunities to fundraise / donate, spread the word on social media, phone bank, canvas, etc., in ways that will help take that district in 2018.

Even nearer-term is 10 Actions / 100 Days, which comes from the organizers of the Women’s March. Each ten days, the site posts a new action you can take right now (the first: “Write a postcard to your Senators about what matters most to you – and how you’re going to continue to fight for it in the days, weeks and months ahead.”), along with step-by-step instructions and tools. For the first week, for example, they provide printable postcards, senators’ addresses, and inspiration for what issues you might want to address.

And finally, a bonus site that’s not directly about action, but is still a hugely valuable way to say well-informed: Track Trump, which summarizes daily the Trump administration’s actual political actions (ignoring crazy tweets / distractions / media circus / etc.), and tracks the degree to which Trump fulfills his “Contract with the American Voter” promises for his first 100 days.

From just the past week, it’s already clear that any hopes of Trump surprising us all positively when he actually got into office were badly misplaced. Things are getting ugly already, and we need to move quickly in response.

Swing Left, 10 Actions / 100 Days, and Track Trump. Visit all three, and get to work.