I See The Future In My Dreams (And So Do You In Yours)

The only thing you know for certain is that it will be different from yesterday and different again tomorrow. One choice, endless variety.

Happy Friday!

And a warm welcome from the Tower.

Last night, I dreamt that a friend was leading a snazzy bikepacking tour to the Arctic Circle.

I saw her face in a high-end outdoor magazine, looking all adventurous, surrounded by trendy black and white photos of expensive kit and moody Arctic landscapes.

I won’t lie: I was jealous.

I messaged her the next day and this is what I got back:

Funnily enough, my jealousy evaporated into awe.

For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor, cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel, Expeditions Manager at British Exploring Society and trainee Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Practitioner.

Yes, that is too many hats.

In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.

Sometimes, like you, I see the future in my dreams.

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A Tale of Two Entertainments

I’m too hard on myself. That much is clear.

Entertainment 1: Reading on the Beach

A novel I was given by Jessie, a woman we met at the Gaza Sunbirds fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. Improbably, her partner is called Jay. Jessie J. Jessie had bought the book earlier that day, quite forgetting that she’d read it before. The book, she said, was forgettable. I’m enjoying it. It’s by the same author who wrote Orbital, with the same driftingly pretty language. This book, unlike Orbital, does have flow as well as meander: a plot is in sight, just around the bend.

I actually didn’t read this book on the beach yesterday, but it looked better in the photo than the other book that I was reading on the beach.

And, in fact, I probably read no more than four pages before C called. We chatted for about fifteen minutes, then I stood up and left the beach with a dizzifying headrush-headthrob — not caused by our conversation, I hasted to add, but because of the cold still clinging to my throat.

I was on the beach for about twenty minutes in total and I read four pages. It was the highlight of my day.

Entertainment 2: A Football Game in Front of a Football Game

In the evening, while watching a football game on TV, I downloaded a football game called Retro Football Manager 24 and played that on my phone for about an hour.

Awful, addictive.

I was on a six-game winning streak with 1995-era Liverpool, lifting the boys from the relegation places after a disastrous start to the season, when I finally deleted the app.

It was 9.40pm. I felt like crap: tired, but wired.

After a day of working on screens, a nourishing evening snatched away from me by myself.

I’m too hard on myself — that much is clear — but that’s how I felt.

Lock Me Out

In immediate response to my phone-tethered self-disgust, I downloaded another app: Lock Me Out (Android only), and set up my phone to lock me out of itself when I have unlocked the demonic device fifty times in a day.

Regular readers will know that this is not my first attempt to limit my screen time.

I’m too hard on myself, etc., etc., but, my sweet lord, what a list:

• You damned, ugly, shiny thing. It would hurt you to ring, wouldn't it?” (2016)

• No Mobile Phone Revisited (2017)

• No Phone Before Noon (2018)

• I believe in Minimum Viable Technology (2018)

• The Great Whatsapp Stink (2021)

• Call Me Baby (2022)

• Untethered Thinking (2022)

• Woolly Mammoths & Butterfly Wings (2022)

• Delete The Internet (2024)

• Delete The Internet [UPGRADE 🚀] (2024)

• Are You Using Your Phone? Or is your phone using you? (Duh, duh, DUH!) (2024)

• Enter 🐈 Phone (2024)

And every new strategy I’m convinced is going to be The One.

Here’s how that all panned out:

I am at least very good at keeping records of how much I use my phone. 😂 You can see from this that my phone use has stayed pretty stable since I started a full time job in August last year, reliably varying from 4-12 hours per week every week. You can also see the one successful experiment I had, back in January, when I managed to slash my phone time to 2 hours for, er, 1 week. It took 8 weeks for that habit to wear off and for me to return to baseline.

But I tell you, reader: Lock Me Out is The One.

My intention is to gradually reduce the number of unlocks I allow myself per day, hoping to not be too hard on myself again, but rather become more comfortable in discomfort, in silence, in boredom.

Let Me In

Helping me on that path is yet another app (oh, the irony): The Way by Henry Shukman, travel writer, novelist, poet and Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage.

(Hat-tip to Tim Ferriss — his referral link will get you 30 free meditations instead of the usual 12.)

I’ve never managed to stick to meditation, despite trying off and on for what must be decades. (But let’s not beat me up about that, eh.)

• Three Lessons from a Vipassana Meditation Retreat (2017)

• Meditations on Transcendental Meditations (2019)

• A Time Of Unmasking (2024)

I feel today, however, that I am reaching a point of, if not emergency, then perhaps urgency: my immune system is struggling, I feel overloaded and time-crushed. I know life isn’t going to get any simpler — that’s not how life works (thank goodness).

But life isn’t my experience of life. My experience of life is my experience of life. And that can be changed, or at least nudged one way or another. (Hat-tip to the Stoics there.)

And so: The Way arrives at the right time.

Superficial, Revolutionary

There are two things I particularly like about The Way, quite apart from the high production values. The first is superficial, but important. The second is revolutionary, insofar as a phone app can be (which isn’t very far).

Firstly, and superficially: Henry Shukman has an English accent — Oxford, to be precise. This shouldn’t be important, but it is. Familiarity, to humans, is familiar. And what is familiar is reassuring and what is reassuring is authoritative.

This is as much a warning as it is a recommendation.

Firstly, the teaching still has to be good. A teacher who gains authority through familiarity is a dangerous entity unless they back their authority with wisdom.

(I’m looking at you, certain politicians right now 👀.)

But secondly, if you’ve been raised — by Hollywood or, I don’t know, colonialism — to find English accents sinister, then maybe you won’t get on with Shukman.

Your ‘meditation’ will begin shortly. Excellent.

But unless you have a full-on panic attack when your ears ingest The Queen’s English, I’d still recommend you give The Way a chance, for my second, moderately revolutionary reason.

One Choice, Endless Variety

The conceit behind The Way is that the acolyte (app-olyte?) is on a journey of a thousand steps. Each step on The Way is a meditation, and one step follows another in sequence.

When you are on a mountain hike, you can’t take one step forward and then magically skip to another step six miles away on a different mountain. You must take the next step on this mountain: you have one choice alone.

Similarly, The Way is presented as an inexorable sequence of meditations: one session per day, with each day intentionally designed to follow the last, as you gradually build the foundations of a sustainable meditation practice.

(Foundations only, yes. As all outdoor guides know, reaching the mountain summit is never guaranteed: beware those who promise thus.)

Having said that, the content on The Way isn’t locked. You can repeat old meditations or even (I haven’t actually tested this, why would I?) skip ahead, out of sequence, to any of the other 600-odd meditations further along the path.

This makes The Way exactly the same as all the other apps: a huge steaming pile of content stored on your phone. But its presentation, its default mode, its user experience is unique: this is today’s meditation — no other.

There is no choice — unless you choose choice. But why would you take away that magic?

In this, er, way, Shukman neatly sidesteps the paradox of choice.

It feels as close to having a teacher in the room as a stupid phone app could: Shukman himself has decreed what meditation you will do today. The only thing you know for certain is that it will be different from yesterday and different again tomorrow.

Like life: one choice, endless variety.

Even after a whole seven days of using The Way, I’m still too hard on myself — that much is clear.

Nevertheless, with time, I will become more comfortable: with one choice for life, and the endless variety, each step as it comes.

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Three Tiny Big Things

1. Credit: Obsidian

Today’s newsletter (and my experience of life in general) has been supercharged this week by using Daily Notes on Obsidian, a free notetaking app that syncs between my phone and my computer.

Pairs well with Going the Extra Millimetre and Homework for Life.

2. England’s Community Forests

Did not know these were a thing until today.

There’s one in Barking, for heaven’s sake!

3. Manual of Me

Manual of Me is a personal user manual — a document which helps others understand how they can work best with you.

It’s a living document which explains how you work, how to work brilliantly with you, what value you bring, your preferences, needs and motivations.

Hat-tip to Nic of New Forest Off Road Club fame for first switching me onto this.

Double hat-tip to Jenny and the Facilitation Pharmacy for making me actually sit down and do it! 🙏

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Thank You

Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚

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As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support.

diwyc,
dc: