Duncan.co

  • Hard Choices Are Easy Choices In Disguise

    When faced with a personal decision choose the more difficult option because it will actually be easier in the long run. It’s like personal finance. Spending money now is easy but it’s not good for your long term savings. Saving money now is always the more difficult option and yet it is far better in the long run.

    For example:

    Decision: Should I smoke that crack?! No!
    Result: You won’t become a drug addict and you’ll save money on buying crack. (isn’t crack cheap though? hmph)

    Decision: Should I wake up earlier and gor for a run before work? Yes.
    Result: You’ll be happier and healthier in the long run.

    Decision: Should I work instead of playing Angry Birds? Yes.
    Result: You’ll accomplish more and spend your time doing things that matter.

    I think you get the idea.

    It’s pretty easy to get overun by the “shoulds”. I should be doing this or I should be doing that. Don’t let that kind of thinking take over. Be gentle with yourself and if you really want to just sit around watching movies than do that.

    Just don’t make a habit of making the easiest choice all the time. The choices you make now become the habits you form and those habits will impact the rest of your life.

    A side effect of this line of thinking is that you’ll appreciate the down time, or non productive, or just plain fun stuff more. A ‘treat’ isn’t a treat if you do it all the time. You wouldn’t eat a tub of ice cream every day? So why would you watch 2 hours of TV or movies every night?

    Also, I’m really enjoying writing these posts these days. I hope you’re finding them useful. Also, I’ve fixed up this site a bit but you won’t see it if you’re viewing via RSS. I’ve updated my photography portfolio and disabled comments on this site. I feel the comments just aren’t adding any value and they’re just another inbox for me.

  • The Flow State

    You Know The Feeling
    Your head is down, you’re cranking out whatever you’re working on and all of a sudden time disappears and nothing else matters. Everything else is muted and you are just destroying! Well, er, in a good way of course. Everyone has this feeling of getting into the zone or being in a state of flow from time to time. I’ve started to ‘hack’ this artificially get myself into this headspace at will. Here’s how I do it.

    Drinks
    I’ve noticed that I almost always have some type of drink on the go. And no, I’m not talking alcohol. I gave up that poison years ago. I’m talking about the best espresso you’ve ever tasted at a cafe in Athens. Or the incredible organic coffee from Arbutus Coffee in Vancouver. Whenever I get into this flow state or into this zone there is always a drink involved. I suppose the caffeine induces some type of biochemical or neurological response which makes my feel like I’m in the zone… It could also be that I’m least productive when I don’t have a drink going.

    Music or Silence
    If there is not complete silence at the ass crack of dawn then I need to have music. Usually ambient or lyric free music is best. For example this week’s Friday Mixtape by Tor is exactly the type of flow inducing music that I love.

    Very Early Mornings
    I’m talking 4:30 or 5:00AM. When I get a restful sleep I can rock up at this time of day and immediately start cranking it out. For many people, like my most awesome brother, the late night is a better flow time. He and I once tried to work together and this caused huge issues! He works best at night, I work best in the morning. You can’t just start waking up this early on a whim. It takes quite a while to get used to the sheer ridiculosity of this time of day. The best part about this time of day is you can take your dog for a walk and there is near silence. Take your dog to the local cafe and crank out some work before the rest of your timezone is even awake.

    Exercise
    The best combination is this: some fantastic early morning exercise, a great coffee type drink, and silence or ambient music. If you’re a runner you can parlay your well documented ‘runners high‘ into your flow state. If you can combine all of them in the right order you’ll be a productivity master. Your inbox will be zeroed and you’ll get your most important tasks done before your friends or colleagues are even awake. They’ll wonder how you make it look so easy. It appears as though most high performance people (yeah I just said that, pfft!?) do this.

    If you really have trouble finding your flow state use one of the time tracking tools to monitor your productivity. Then take note of your environment. Act accordingly.

  • Counterintuitive: Fear, Run At It

    Imagine you’re out in relatively shallow water in the ocean. The waves are breaking and everything is beautiful. All of a sudden there is an enormous set of waves coming in and they’ll be breaking right on you. What to do? Do you run in fear toward the shore or do you run right at the waves? If you run toward shore chances are you’ll get pummelled by the waves, if you run toward the waves you can easily just dive under them to calmer water beyond.

    I’ve found this handy little analogy serves me well. It’s something I’ve been thinking about recently: running at fear.

    Use that little voice in your mind that says you shouldn’t do something because you’re afraid as a guide. Don’t listen to it and simply do the opposite. Run toward what scares you at full speed and you will prosper. You will be totally alive and happy.

    Whether it’s new experiences, new challenges, new opportunities, or just big risks, let your fear guide you. Fear is great, it tells you what you should be doing! It’s practically a compass.

    I’m not talking about being reckless (like base jumping without a parachute or something) so don’t be an idiot. I’m talking about growing as a person. Act accordingly.

    Update August 13 2012
    See also: Push, push, push. Expanding your comfort zone. by Derek Sivers.

  • Counterintuitive: Internet, Less Is More

    Contrary to what common sense would suggest, having less connectivity will actually increase your productivity. If your internet access is intermittent and you’re genuinely offline, you’ll get more crap accomplished.

    I’ve written 40 000+ words, shot 30 000+ photos, bought and sold several websites+domains+photographs, and run a successful photography school. All of this was with very limited connectivity while traveling through 20+ countries this past year. I’ve gotten more done in less time and I’m happier for it.

    When you do have “online” time you have be highly focused on what you need to get done. As a result, you get it all done. Think reverse Parkinson’s Law which states:

    Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

    Online time should be a treat, like ice cream. If you have 24/7 high speed internet getting distracted into useless minutiae is easy. The web is a hyperactive distraction machine. There is something incredibly awesome and simultaneously useless that comes out every single day. If you want to be more effective give yourself more offline time.

    Spend your time having fun and building sand castles, not Facebooking your friends to death. Speaking of ways to be more effective, read this article about email.

  • On Color and Depression

    Something positively incredible happens when you rewire your brain and turn the corner out of a serious depression. Aside from feeling better (which is fantastic on its own) you will start to see in vivid color again. I’m not sure what the neurological or biochemical reason is for this but this phenomena is very real and I’ve experienced it.

    I was so depressed that my dad decided to bring me to a place called Canyon Ranch. It’s pretty much the ultimate health spa with a “life enhancement” wing where you go when you’re, um, not well. People who drink too much, are on drugs, or are depressed like I was.

    Upon arriving at Canyon Ranch everything was muted brown, gray, and seemingly dead. My depression had literally robbed me of my ability to see in true color! It made me somewhat color blind.

    After a week or two of regular exercise, the most healthy food, great sleep, and amazing people I started to notice something. Specifically there were two paintings in the lobby that literally stopped me in my tracks. I had to ask someone if they had just been put up because a: I hadn’t even noticed them for a whole week and b: the colors were so vibrant they appeared to be back-lit like a high resolution HD monitor.

    I’m totally over this stuff now and every single day is filled with the most vivid and radiant color imaginable. I’m lucky to have had the support of my dad and most of the members of my family. I hope your support network is as good as mine was.

  • On “Saving” A Young Girl’s Life

    My Garmin Forerunner GPS watch tells me we’re doing 52.4 kilometers per hour on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry en route to Tasmania. Life is good and I’m really enjoying the adventure. I fire up Hootsuite to tell people I feel good about helping save a young girl’s life a few days earlier. I brag about how I helped in saving her life. I thought I was “all that” for helping out… Then I started searching the web to try to contact her and, um, well let’s go back to the start:

    The story…

    We we’re at a beach in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere called Port Broughton. It was “hot as” as they say here in Australia so we wanted to go for a swim. Just as I reached the water I see two women yelling at me from a floating platform about 100 meters out in to the ocean in waist deep water. They we’re hysterically screaming “call an ambulance”.

    Like an idiot I yell back “I have no phone?!”. It wasn’t the time or the place to explain I was a traveler and I use Skype for voice communication… Luckily someone had a phone and was already calling an ambulance.

    I raced out to the platform as fast as I could throwing my frogskins on the beach. I don’t know why I did this but you don’t think straight in a panic. (The sunglasses broke…)

    There were two panicked ladies trying to resuscitate a non breathing and very purple young girl. Her name was Hayley and she looked like a healthy young girl except that she wasn’t breathing. Hayley’s friend said she was just lying on the platform tanning and then she stopped breathing. (Hayley had a heart surgery before so this is probably why this happened)

    She had some nasty vomit (or fluid or something) blocking her airway so I took it out. She was totally unresponsive, didn’t appear to be breathing, and purple at this time. We made sure her airway was clear and tried to get some air into her lungs. I was positively freaking out on the inside but trying to remain calm on the outside. Little kids screaming, crying teenagers, and adults yelling made for all out chaos.

    Before I knew it there was a whole group of genuinely freaked out men and women on the little floating platform. So many that it was almost tipping over. People we’re literally falling over themselves in sheer panic trying to help this little angel. Hayley’s mother appeared and was trying to talk to Hayley and help out. Then a man stepped off a tin boat and almost wiped out completely but I caught him. He behaved and sounded like a doctor.

    We realized that she’d have to be transferred to shore before the ambulance could do any good. It wasn’t one of those spinal cord injuries or anything like that so we decided to move her. A local man (who later had a fireman’s uniform on) brought his tin boat and we lifted her into the boat. I felt strange physically lifting her because people we’re standing around and they weren’t doing anything. Just staring. Not to mention lifting a little girl who was purple and didn’t seem to be alive was actually quite scary.

    Three people continued to perform CPR on Hayley as she was taken ashore in a tin boat. It was quite precarious.

    I made it to shore before the boat did so another bystander and I lifted her out of the boat. We didn’t have anywhere to put her down. There we’re rocks, weeds, and crap everywhere. We first tried to lay her down on a kids inflatable boat but the doctor yelled out “too soft” as he disembarked from the tin boat. Too soft, meaning for the chest compressions of CPR. Someone else grabbed a wooden plank and we laid her down on that. All of that happened in about 4 seconds.

    The three gentlemen from the boat continued to perform CPR on her and at this moment the first ambulance arrived. It looked like a volunteer ambulance and the poor folks seemed positively overwhelmed and immediately called for backup. You have to understand we’re in the middle of nowhere and having an ambulance there within minutes was pure good luck because they must have been in the area.

    They took out the machine you see in the movies where they “shock” the patient and yell “clear”. Turns out a defibrillator is another thing that is quite terrifying in real life. It’s robotic voice will haunt me. They shocked her several times and her little body twitched violently. The machine would sometimes recommend a shock and sometimes not recommend a shock. I think that meant her heart was starting and stopping. I don’t know, I wasn’t going to ask questions either. Not exactly appropriate.

    At this point I felt like a useless person just standing there gawking so I waited on the road and directed the other ambulance and rescue vehicles into the area. It was hard to find the little spot and it turns out they needed some guidance.

    After that we just waited, and waited, then waited some more. There wasn’t anything I could do to help. We tried to be respectful and stay well back.

    After what seemed like an eternity a helicopter arrived and landed right on the beach. Then they airlifted her out (to Adelaide I think) and people told us that “she’ll be fine”. Everyone seemed to think she would be fine. I thought she would be fine as well because none of the rescue people seemed to be in any kind of a hurry. I thought that meant all was ok.

    When she flew off in the helicopter I wasn’t sure what to feel. I was just hoping she’d survive.

    Five days later and Dorothy and I are on the ferry to Tasmania and I’m trying to contact her.

    “Ladies and gentleman this is your captain speaking. Dolphins have been spotted out the starboard side of the ship. That’s the right side”

    We see dolphins playing in the bow wave of the massive ship and at that very moment I find a Facebook page with Hayley’s status and discover she had passed away after five days of fighting for her life in hospital. It was like a kick in the stomach. It was an awful feeling and I had never even met her.


    :( :( :( This is me, after reading about her passing. :( :( :(

    From all accounts she was a very special young lady. I should also mention that I don’t yet know how she died but it may have been related to a previous heart surgery she had.

    There isn’t really much more to say than this. Let’s just be thankful for every single day we have together.

    Also, just know that CPR is super important. I could have WAY better prepared for this situation by taking some simple life saving classes. I could hardly remember anything since I last learned CPR when I was about 13 years old. Spend a couple minutes and give yourself a refresher on CPR.

    Here is the only photograph I could find of Hayley:

    ♥ right back at you Hayley. R.I.P

    My condolences go to Hayley’s family and friends. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more.

    UPDATE: here are some better links and resources regarding CPR:

    http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/

    http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/CPR_UCM_001118_SubHomePage.jsp

    http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.d8aaecf214c576bf971e4cfe43181aa0/?vgnextoid=aea70c45f663b110VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default

  • La Tropicana Cafe Review

    5/5

    These folks we’re great to us. They let us plug our laptop in and we’re quite friendly. Other cafes in this country should take note!

    177 High Street, Fremantle WA 6160, Australia

    https://goo.gl/maps/nPJIJ

  • Friday Mixtape 073 is Online

    Get it over here.

  • New URL: Duncan.co

    Pretty happy to report that my new url is Duncan.co!

  • People of Lisbon in Photos

    Here are some photos I took of people in Lisbon.