Explanations, not excuses
So after talking a good game on how gamification seems to really be working last week, I’m on track to be missing my weekly pool session.
Normally, this is where I’d spiral in a fit of shame fuelled anger. The usual recriminations: I’m weak, pathetic, how hard is it to do 1 thing, etc. But this year it’s catching me a little different because of phrase I’ve had bouncing around my skull.
Explanations, not excuses.
I often find that as a society we tend to label reasons why we, or others, either don’t do something or don’t meet the mark in someway as an excuse. Excuses are inherently negative; even when we tell ourselves or whoever is the excuse giver that it’s a good excuse, we’re still often implying they’re trying to worm their way out of their commitment and into forgiveness.
We can sometimes do the same for other people, like a parent trying to excuse their child’s behaviour. Always it’s the same; excuse the negative, hope for the positive.
This creates a pretty heavy burden on me when it comes to my own shortcomings. My perfectionism has set a pretty high bar for expected behaviours and outcomes, so excuses come loudly and often to an unforgiving mind. Follow that up with the self-awareness to know what I’m doing on all sides of the debate and I usually just end up doing nothing as a result to avoid the shame.
Until I started reframing it.
If excuses are emotionally charged attempts to avoid consequences and achieve forgiveness, explanations are cold logical attempts to gain understanding, which helps you gain a measure of peace. An explanation for something helps you see the why behind a thing without their being an expectation of judgement. You’re just stating facts after all.
Explanations aren’t consistently perfect; there are bad, or more accurately, lazy, explanations just as there are bad excuses. A lazy explanation is hand waving, surface level thinking. A good explanation then has logic at it’s core and in ‘if this then that’ premise. ‘This happened because that happened causing this.’ Since I’ve started having that phrase beat against the edges of my skull, dealing with incidents and failures have been significantly easier.
So what’s my issue and explanation this week? It’s looking increasingly likely that I’m going to miss my pool/snooker obligations this week. It’s due by Tuesday but various reasons have kept me away from the table.
First, I’m sick. I have a heavy cold that started being symptomatic Monday, progressed to the peak on Wednesday/Thursday, and am now feeling a bit more alive whilst also expelling all of the hard gunk. Not ideal playing fitness.
Second, I had a 3 hour neurodiversity assessment on Friday, something I’ve been dreading for a while, largely because it was a 3 hour appointment talking about my entire life to a new psychiatrist (unsurprisingly, the results were yes, you’re on the spectrum). This also meant I could risk sneaking off the to the local cafe and their terrible table to play pool in case I was late for the appointment.
And yet I’m still gonna try. Now I’m over the worst, and fuelled by a ginger powered concoction, I’m seeing a friend later who needs some support. I’m meeting him down the pub, which I hope has a pool table, but if not I know there’s a table nearby. I’m sure I’ll find my way to it somehow.
But if not, I’m fairly safe in the knowledge that I’ve had some fairly solid reasons this week, and I can go on regardless.
Turns out gamification works
I’ve had a really long week. Between work taking it out of me, deadlines for various appointments and meetings creeping up on me (and in once, dumping 8 forms that needs completing immediately in my lap), and dealing with the aftermath of a very highly stimulating and intense saturday, I’ve not had a lot of energy spare for anything else.
Plus the attempts I did have at playing pool were scuppered. My lunch break game on Tuesday had to be called off to help with stuff at home, and on Friday the second worst pool table I’ve ever played on was actually occupied by someone else that day, which is the last time I go there on a ‘normal’ lunch time.
So late on Friday night, I was considering the possibility of skipping this weeks post and practice session. A week wouldn’t hurt, certainly not on blog posts where I’ve built up a small buffer, although granted not as big as reading double the target. Plus it’s not like I don’t have legitimate reasons to skip a week. Then I checked Beeminder and changed my plans.
Sure, with blogging I had a 1 week grace period, but if I didn’t play snooker or pool by Tuesday, I’d be penalised. Now, the penalty would be $5, so around £4, and no matter how I looked at it it would cost me more to play for an hour that it would to skip.
That thought lasted about 30 seconds, and I booked an hour and a half to happen after my gym session. I even cut my session short despite trying to make my health a priority right now to ensure I got the most of my session. II was not skipping it, not this week, not while I had a hard deadline.
This isn’t my first dalliance with gamification. I’ve done the whole ‘Don’t skip days’ thing with a calendar and pen to cross out each day I’ve done a thing. I’ve tried literal gamification, using the app Habitica. I’ve tried various habit trackers, including using the ones in my mood tracking app Daylio until that got too much. All of them didn’t last longer than a few weeks, and ended up making me resent the activities in question.
Especially Habitica. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get on board with that.
Each of them failed because it felt too much to track a daily or weekly activity that way, but they also failed because there was zero penalty for failure outside of feeling bad, and I can handle feeling bad.
I purposely set the penalty low at $5 initially because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of failing, paying a stupidly price, and then scrapping it all in a tantrum. But the idea of being hit by $5 still stings. That’s a day’s commute to the office, or the extra treats for my wife I buy. Now I’m back into, that’s half my monthly sub to WoW Classic, and if I keep the failure going it doubles. It’s affordable, but it’s enough of a sting that I paid nearly triple to get a decent session today.
So turns out gamification works on me after all, I just needed the right incentive at the right dose. And I can play catch up at the gym tomorrow, safely in the knowledge that I’ve hit my goal for the week.
Finally picked up WoW Classic after years of thinking about it and an hour and a half spent watching playthroughs yesterday. Sometimes the algorithm’s good.
October Review
Month 2! Let’s check how I’ve been doing.
Quick refresher: the aim of the blog is to make me publicly accountable for actually progressing in my hobbies, alongside using Beeminder to fine me if I miss the goal. The three I’m currently tracking and their monthly targets are:
- Reading: Finish one book per month
- Writing: Write four posts here per month covering one of the activities (500 word minimum)
- Pool/snooker - play/practice five times a month
✅ Reading
Another two books finished - Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, and The Muscle Ladder by Jeff Nippard. Reviews listed below. I now have two books currently on the go:
- Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss on Kindle
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day is proving to be difficult. A really rough description of it is it’s kinda of like Mr Carson from Downton Abbey goes on a road trip across the 1950’s midlands, drip feeding you plot points through memories. I’m halfway through, and it’s starting to pick up, so fingers cross. Outside of starting a new audiobook, I’m going to focus my reading time on these two as much as I can. Really want to get them both finished this month.
✅ Writing
Posts 3 and 4 were trickier for me. I let the deadlines do their job though and a pass is a pass. 5 posts for the month, 1 a week:
✅ Pool/Snooker
Managed five sessions. The last two weren’t great, and I do need to come up with a good way to structure a practice. Snooker in particular has a greater time need; 1 hour around the table just isn’t enough to get any real progress. Either way though, still counts.
Beeminder
I just held in my hands a second edition copy of the each book in the Lord of the Rings in near immaculate condition. I have literal goosebumps.
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Note: this review is for the Audible version read by Alfred Molina. While that doesn’t necessarily affect the content, there is obviously a different experience between listening to a wonderful voice through your headphones and reading 624 pages. Long either way, but still a different experience.
I’ve mentioned before that this one has been on my read list for about 8 years now. I got it after listening to the Steve Jobs biography, also by Isaacson, having been taken with the writing style and thinking that biographies might be for me after all. I think I lasted about half an hour before realising that it probably wasn’t smart to follow a 27 hour audiobook with a 17 hour one; burn out is real.
I’m glad I didn’t return it though, because it’s easily one of the best books I’ve read for a while. It’s by no means an academic level historical review of his life; at several points Isaacson will discuss various theories about a painting or a relationship before offering his own non-expert opinion, so if you’re looking for a definitive article, this ain’t it.
What it is though is a fascinating view of the life and work of one of history’s most famous polymaths. It follows his life from being raised as an illegitimate son of a notary and his apprenticeship under Verrocchio, to his various times spent in Florence, Milan, Rome, and ultimately France. Along the way, Isaacson covers notes and background on his most prominent works, culminating in the seminal Mona Lisa, but also the various works and commissions he started but failed to complete.
The latter point if part of what really interested me along the way though: the way Da Vinci worked. Isaacson regularly reviews and quotes from the many, many notebooks Da Vinci left behind, covering his famous to-do lists, to observations he made of nature and anatomy and how he applied them to his art (like noting how the muscles of the face worked and applied to facial expressions), to the personal notes he left, including arguments with his young apprentice/partner, Salai.
He doesn’t just talk about genius, but of Da Vinci’s inherent curiosity he held towards all things and his pursuit of that knowledge, however controversial or heretical it may have been at the time. Rather than being fully irreverent to his legendary status, Isaacson humanises Da Vinci, pointing out his distracted nature, more inclined to procrastination and flights of fancy than intense focus. From dropped projects, to enquiries leading to nowhere, to even his eventual disinterest in the thing he’s most famous for, his paintings, compared to his quest for the answers to the universe, all in the aim of slaking his curiosity.
Again, if you want an academic text on the life and work of Leonardo Da Vinci, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that a New York Times bestseller isn’t for you. As a pop-history book though, I highly recommend it. For me personally, it’s really helped reinforce something I’ve been trying to convince myself of for some time: to actually engage in my curiosity, to try and learn and widen the scope of my knowledge, rather than convince myself that it’s pointless, or I won’t have time.
So on a personal level, 10/10.
I have not put as much time into reading as I’d have liked this month, but I’m determined to finish a second book before Friday. Just a few hours will do the trick.
Every time I cook a roast, I plan it all in advance. Chicken cook time, veg prep time, all of it. And every time, without fail, I forget to account for parboiling the potatoes, adding an extra half hour or so. So, so frustrating.
Poetry
I rarely ever listen to or pay any real attention to lyrics in songs, not consciously at least. I’ll find myself singing them later, so at least some part of my brain does, but in the moment I’m focusing on how they fit into the song. The melody, the rhythm, the harmonies behind it, the place each have in the mix. One big soundscape.
It’s why I listen to a fair amount of non-English language songs, largely J-rock or J-pop, with a smattering of other European countries. On the other hand, it’s also why I’ve long struggled to write lyrics to any songs I’ve written. I can hear the cadence in my head, beat it out on the desk, but any time I put pen to paper it just feels hollow. Devoid of meaning, just words for the sake of words.
On the other side, there was poetry. That I could do.
One of the reasons I keep some kind of notebook with me at all times is I’ll get just snippets pop up in my head. Two or three lines of rhymes or feelings, a snippet of dialogue, a direction in which to go. Every now and then I’d review them, see which ones still have a place in my brain, and try and flesh it out.
And I was kind of okay at it. Put some online, got some praise. In particular a war one I wrote around Remembrance Day that I can neither find nor remember. I’d do open mic nights locally and not totally bomb, which is a solid minimum result. Then I just kind of stopped.
One of the things I’ve been trying to do a lot more recently is avoid over intellectualising things; change course from treating everything like it’s a deep intellectual puzzle that needs analysis and just see if the surface diagnosis fits. In this case, it is that simple: the open mic night closed, so I fell out of that routine, depression and neurodivergence did their work on distracting me from it, and I never allowed myself to go deep in process. It didn’t worm its way into my core.
And I was alone. Not truly, I had friends, I have family, but on this I was alone. I had no friends trying to do the same thing, no mentor I could learn from, and I didn’t have the social skills to try and make one. I was ‘on the breadline’ poor, so taking classes was out of the question, and while there were libraries and books, I had no idea what I was looking for, especially as I was so wrapped up in my perfectionist ‘I can do all the things if I try’ mindset.
But times change and so do I. I may not be surrounded still by poets and artists, but I can change that, even if it’s digital interactions over physical in the short term. I can lean back into my curiosity, expand myself out there again. I’ve got my Zettelkasten ready to accept snippets to flick through, and collect snippets from poetry that resonates with me. And I’ve got a much better selection of research tools than I did 15 years ago, not to mention a much better understanding of my self, how I tick, and how to get around my shortcomings.
I need to finish the three books I currently have on the go, but after that, I’ll be buying/adding A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver and How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy as a starting point. Then we’ll go from there.
Skill Gap
The thing about being a relatively busy adult with a load of responsibilities whilst dealing with neurodiversity issues is that it’s really easy to lose sight of the fun and creative hobbies you want to do. This then leads to the skills behind these hobbies atrophying, creating the dreaded skill gap - the distance between what you can do, and what you want to do.
I feel this most with my guitar playing. I’ve been playing on and off for nearly 20 years, but I would say my skills are trapped in that state of high beginner. Theoretically, I can hang at an intermediate level. Modes, positions, fingerboard awareness, extended chords and how to use them. All in my brain ready to use. I just can’t back it up.
I can definitely play, and play rhythm fairly fast and accurate; I can follow along at around 160bpm, and I can sort of solo. Improvisation is an area I often fail in outside of a pure flow state, usually because all I can hear in my head when I’m trying to solo over a backing track is the original solo (or a live recorded version).
Then there’s the fiddly bits. My bends aren’t 100% accurate and I struggle to put vibrato on them. I can hammer on/pull off pretty cleanly up to about 100bpm in quarter notes, but not much further or faster, and not for more than say 4 to 6 bars. Slides often get a bit blurry if I try to apply speed so the target note gets lost. Then there’s the speed picking issue, plus the fact that I struggle above the 15th fret in any position really.
Combine that with the tendency to play unplugged and I’m left with the inability to turn the sounds in my head into reality.
There are other hobbies I’ve let atrophy, or ones that I want to start picking up, that are similarly easy enough to assess the skills gap. The one I struggle with though is writing. How do you assess something essentially subjective? There’s no real 16th note alternate picking or speed legato playing equivalent in the art of writing, outside of perhaps grammar, and even then, there’s ways around it. Hello, Claude.
Experience has told me that unless it’s universally disliked, writing is difficult to qualify. Low effort, badly written books can still pick up a fan base, whilst highly rated best sellers still have their detractors. For example, I’ve personally tried and failed to read One Hundred Years of Solitude 3 times; I just can’t get on board with it. See also: Rivals by Jilly Cooper, a book that seemed more interested in introducing the 6 page glossary of characters than writing about any of the things said characters actually do on the daily, other than cheat on their partners.
ChatGPT (whose grammar opinions I trust less than Claude, for reasons, although I find it better for general purpose use) tells me to try and assess things like storytelling and structure, narrative pacing, scene construction, but again, being a relative novice at this how would I know? Then there’s the directions I want to push into more - poetry, story writing, etc.
Of course, the answer is simple: I find out by doing the thing. Start writing poetry. Start writing more fiction. Make it more of a daily habit. Then assess it. Pick up things I struggle with, just like I notice the struggle adding vibrato to a string bend.
More importantly, stop using the unknown or unknowable as a reason to not do the thing, or even learn more about doing the thing.
My pencils are sharp enough.
Not overly impressed with the new Tame Impala album on the first go. A few tracks stood out, but it kind just melded into one after a while. Definitely has a vibe, will need to give it a re-listen.
The Muscle Ladder by Jeff Nippard 📚
ChatGPT nailed this one on the head when I asked it to review and make it’s recommendation to me on a buy/not buy decision. I won’t copy/paste the whole response, but it can be summarised as ‘very good at explaining the why, decent beginners output, but for the more experienced lifters it contains information you can find elsewhere.’
That last point I think is the key problem for fitness books everywhere. They seem to either pedal a ‘novel’ approach with limited research, or jazz up the existing information in their own style, obscuring the science stuff with buzzwords and phrases. Plus in 2025, it’s so, so easy to find all the information you need for free online, especially in the age of AI when you can just ask ChatGPT to assess your diet and exercise routine, or recommend a whole new thing for you.
With that being said, why would you then spend money on a book for info you can gain for free?
One reason would be the author, which in this case is science based weightlifter and YouTuber Jeff Nippard. He’s one of the few fitness YouTubers I follow and enjoy; his explanations go into just enough detail to explain the concept without getting too bogged down in the jargon. Plus he has a way of suggesting tweaks to exercises that just work, like switching your dumbbell curls to incline curls or even better, preacher curls, to maximise effectiveness.
Another would be how the information is presented, which is what became the killer aspect for me. As fitness books go, The Muscle Ladder hits the perfect balance of detail and readability. The title of the book is the one and only buzzword for the book; a series of steps towards a leaner, bigger, better physique that, like a ladder, relies on the rungs before your current step being set up just right (alongside the two rails). It also cites its sources, which alone takes up 30 pages of the ebook.
All of that adds up to a book that’s probably helped the way I think about fitness more than any doctor, blog, youtuber, or scheme before hand. In particular, it goes into great detail how to structure a routine: exercises to pick per muscle group, worked sets needed per muscle per week across the various difficulty levels, effective rep ranges and rest periods, the lot.
The main detractor against it is its price. The hardcover RRP is £56.99, although it’s often on offer. That’s a pretty hefty price, and if I had pain that, I might have been a bit more critical. Happily, the ebook was a tenner, and I feel like I’ve more than got my money’s worth.
Like How To Take Smart Notes, its true worth is going to be measured down the line, after I’ve had time to implement its recommendations. It doesn’t provide a nutrition plan but does give recommendations for working out your calorie and macro requirements. It also comes with a range of exercise plans and routines for different abilities or goals, although I’ll be going with my own to test out the rest of the theory.
For now though, I’d give the ebook a solid 8 out of 10, would recommend to anyone looking to take their fitness seriously. The last 2 points will come if I actually get results through it…
I love it when my stationery orders come with a hand written thank you card. Immediately makes me a customer for life.
Finished The Muscle Ladder last night. That’s 12 books for the year, 3 books since starting the blog. Solid pace.
An Actual Opponent
Practicing snooker alone has revealed significant flaws in my game when competing against an actual opponent, but despite losing, I remain optimistic and encouraged by the experience.
Outside of the sub-par intro, loved the new Ranma 1/2. Missed that show so much, the new op just doesn’t hit the same.