Back From The Far Abroad, Cambodia/Vietnam Edition

Dear Friends,

As you are reading this I am either 1) Sleeping; or 2) Doing laundry.

Cambodia and Vietnam were amazing.  I do not know what I expected, but I did not expect this.  As I have 1900 pictures and videos to digest, it may take some time (and sleep) to digest it all.  I offer you this as a very basic taste.

Merlion, Singapore

Royal Palace, Phnom Penh Cambodia

Bayon Temple, Siam Rep, Cambodia

Angkor Wat - Siam Rep, Cambodia

Sampan Ride, Mekong Delta, Vietnam

 Saigon, Vietnam

Japanese Covered Bridge, Hoi An, Vietnam

Imperial Citadel and City, Hue, Vietnam

Thien Mu Pagoda, Hue, Vietnam

Lăng Tự Đức, Hue, Vietnam

Lăng Khải Định, Hue, Vietnam

 Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Traditional Water Puppets, Ha Noi, Vietnam

Essentialism (X): Essence Of The Essentialist: Trade-Offs

 At the time of the publishing of the book Essentialism (2014), author Greg McKeown asks a question:  If you were able to travel back in time to 1972 and invest $1 in every company in the S&P 500, which company would have gotten you the biggest return?  It is a trick question; the answer is none.  The correct answer is Southwest Airlines.

How did they do it?  By acknowledging the reality of trade-offs.

McKeown creates a phrase later in the chapter which I list here as a guide: "We can do anything, but we cannot do everything".

In the case of Southwest, it meant choosing to fly to set destinations (not every one), not having assigned seating, no first class seating, and no meals.  The trade-off was that they were a low cost airline which could offer stellar service.  Said Herb Kelleher, the founder, at a talk "You have to look at every opportunity and say 'Well, no...I'm sorry.  We are not going to do a thousand different things that won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve."

The other option is straddling, trying to keep all the current options while introducing new ones.  This is not a sustainable position for two reasons. The first is simply that there are not enough time/resources to do everything.  The second is that by doing all things (or trying to), one cannot truly have select a strategic vision - worst case, one has two incompatible strategies one is trying to execute.

Have you ever, asked McKeown, spent time with someone who is always trying to fit one more thing in?  Their logic is that of "I can fit one more thing in".  The reality, posits McKeown, is that this is a false logic:  by saying "yes" to one thing, we are saying "no" to other things.  Trade-offs are the reality of life: it is only we who fool ourselves about this.  

The nature of tradeoffs is complicated (perhaps in our own minds) by the fact that both (or multiple) options are things that we want; scarcely do we struggle about doing something pleasing versus something we have no interest in. More vacation or more pay?  More time with family or more time with activities?  Faster or better?

A Non-essentialist asks the question "How can I do both?"  The Essentialist asks "Which problem do I want?"  The Essentialist consciously and knowingly makes choices; as Thomas Sowell has said "There are no solutions.  There are only trade-offs."

But trade-offs, says McKeown, represent a significant opportunity.

By forcing us to actually think, weigh options, and select (hopefully strategically) what is the best choice for us, we "significantly increase our chance of achieving the outcome we want.  Like Southwest (above), we can enjoy the success that comes from making a consistent set of choices."  By switching the question from "What do I have to give up?" to "What do I want to go big on?", we change our thinking from that of scarcity ("What am I losing?") to potential ("What can I do that has the biggest impact?")

In closing, McKeown says "Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried.  They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and thoughtfully."

Application:

Of the three areas (Choose, Discern, Trade-offs) of the core of the Essentialist, I feel like this is by far my weakest link.

I am painfully aware of the nature of trade-offs.  In a great many ways, that has lead to the fact that I am one of the worst decision makers I know, because I never want to close options down. It is also not helpful that I have a broad range of interests; the idea that somehow I have to have some level of choices is not one I come to willingly.

Yet the results are clear enough in my life.  I spend time running from activity to activity or interest to interest without increasing my ability in any of them.  I will try to map out every moment of my day to somehow be a constructive activity, thus depriving myself of both sleep and any down time.

And this is point - right at this moment - that God seems to be hammering me over the head.  Have too many things going and interests going on, to the point of now openings anywhere?  Fine.  Let us completely remake your life and pull you away from all of that.  Let Me, God seems to be saying, give you an empty slate to consider everything that is in your life.

You can indeed do anything, but you cannot do everything.  Choose wisely.

The Collapse CLXXXIII: Gifts

20 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Winter continues its landing approach: the temperatures are definitely trending in a single direction with nights starting to become such that one does not want to linger out in the evening. The days continue their run towards night as well, shaving off small splinters of useful daylight with every passing sunset.

I have not written since the fire as there has been little enough to write about.  True, I have perhaps been a bit more reclusive than my usual self, leaving for foraging rather early and being home earlier than I would usually be, so the likelihood of seeing anyone has diminished even below its usual odds. But I have sincerely made an effort to stay here on my own small piece of property.

While nothing has happened, there is no sense in pushing things to where they might happen.

The last few days would be rather unremarkable until a rather strange thing happened: a bag of coffee showed up on my doorstep. The next day, a ziploc bag of jerky. This morning, three pieces of seasoned firewood.

The coffee was some brand I had never heard of: “Strong like the Mountains” ran the logo on the advertising for a tourist town far North of here. The jerky was very clearly homemade, firewood of a quality I have not seen or burned in over a year.

I asked Young Xerxes about them; he professed to know nothing but said he would “look into it”. I have become acquainted with him well enough now to fully expect he will not look into it.

I also fully expect he knows where these gifts came from.

It is hard to accept such things, given the situation that we find ourselves in and that these represent real sacrifice on the part of their givers. The jerky can be remade of course and perhaps the firewood could be re-seasoned (you should see these logs, Lucilius; I will try and save them for Yule logs). The coffee is effectively irreplaceable.

But as my mother always reminded me, to not accept a gift or accept it with poor grace is to denigrate both the giver and the intention behind it.

Perhaps even I have been made a bit cynical by the world we now live in.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Anatolian Museum of Civilization (III)

 Finally, we get to the stone, some of the most enduring work we have of old.

These soldiers mounted the walls of the Neo-Hittite walls (12th - 8th Century B.C.):

Warrior Procession (900-700 B.C.):

The last king of the state of Kargmis is seen here giving a speech (900-700 B.C.):

Originally mounted over a gate (900-700 B.C.):

Procession of musicians (900-700 B.C.):

Procession of female characters, perhaps nuns (900-700 B.C.):

A King (900-700 B.C.):

Bird-Headed Lions (900-700 B.C.):

Griffon (1200-700 B.C.):

Stone Lion, 900-700 B.C.:

2024 Turkey: Anatolian Museum of Civilization (II)

 A collection of spear points and scrapers:

Sun disc, 1900-2230 B.C.:

Representation of an early forge:

Bull Statue:

Hammers, Jewelry:

Animal figures:

Clay Tablets from Hittite times. This one is a certificate of debt (because debt never really goes away):

A diplomatic latter between two kings:

A certificate of divorce...

And a marriage certificate.

Pottery:

Bulls:

The circular wine vessel is the same as we same being made at Venessa Seramik thousands of years later:

Animal pottery

The Magic You Are Looking For

As long-time readers of this blog may recall, every training session I have with my headmaster has been one of self discovery - not always good self discovery of course, but self discovery.  

I say "not good".  What I mean is "not good for my feelings", not "not good for correcting myself".  This time, the learning was around my willingness to do the work.

Do The Work is actually the title of a book by Steven Pressfield (he of Gates of Fire fame), the point of which is that in order to make progress, one has to push aside the resistance (The Lizard brain, he calls it) and start doing the things one needs to do to move forward.

And to be fair, that is part of what I was confronted with.  But the other thing, the deeper thing, is simply that I do not fully "do the work" I need to.

Perhaps because I did so well in school (I was, and am, a very good student as the whole "learn/study/test" thing works for my mind), I somehow picked up the belief that not only can I do anything (which is helpful) but that I can do it without necessarily having to invest the time and energy to fully master the thing - to "do the work".  Whether by bouts of intellect or a jovial nature, I have - in more cases than I tend to think - managed to "bend the rules" to do things.  Sometimes that looks a lot like having some but not all of the qualifications to do a thing (like, for example, my current line of work where effectively I have "grandfathered in" simply by the amount of time I have been in it).  Sometimes it is by knowing the outer shell of a thing but not the whole thing, yet projecting as if I do.  Sometimes it is being agreeable and personable and carefully avoiding having to display any actual knowledge.

This manifests itself in a lot of ways.  The most visible is simply making pronouncements based on what I can recall or believe to be true instead of following up to find out the facts.  Sometimes this is me doing things my own way and trying to fit it into the task that I have been asked. Sometimes, it is me simply using a very basic level of knowledge and trying to extrapolate to the more advanced concepts.  Sometimes, this is trying to rush through something I do not know well or fully in hopes that speed will carry me through to the parts I know well.

This all works, of course.  Until it does not.  And, as it turns out, the longer attempt to stay on a glide path instead of a flight path, the more obvious it becomes.

I want advancement in things - Iaijutsu of course in this context, but other things as well.  And I am guilty more times than I care to accept or think that I have attempted to find the easy way, the "magic way", to get it done.   Why?  Because "the work" is often boring.  It is repetitive.  It is time consuming. And progress often does not appear as the noticeable progress that fuels me:  there are no good grades.

Just the work.

But there is a magic to making all of this happen, of course.  It is, as the picture above notes, simply doing the work that I am avoiding.

The odd thing is that I know precisely - for every thing I am not making progress in - what that work is.  It means investing time - and by investing time, it means that I will end up doing less of some things because there is only so much time I have and can invest.

For years I believed there is "magic" to success.  There is; the question is whether I am willing to do the magic - which is everything that I have been avoiding to this point.

A Year Of Humility (X): Direct Transmission

 One of the the things that separates my martial art from many others is the idea of direct transmission.

The idea of direct transmission - that one learns directly from the head of the school is embedded in our school (as it is in other schools as well), even to the extent that it is included in our name. The concept is that transmission occurs best (and only) from the head of the school to the students, who then take it back to their own schools to transmit.  Every training with the headmaster becomes an opportunity to recalibrate one's self against the standard (and believe me, I have had plenty of opportunities to "recalibrate").

The idea of distance learning - now made somewhat ubiquitous by the InterWeb - is not something that is considered as acceptable. It is only by the physical presence and observation that the true essence of the art is transmitted.

(Somewhat surprisingly to me, there are schools that offer online lessons in sword martial arts.  I cannot attest to their effectiveness; I only know that this is not the teaching of my school).

How, you might be asking yourself, does this relate to humility?

Part of the concept of direct transmission is that the headmaster, as the transmitter, is directly providing me with the input on the correct technique and application of it.  I, as the student, am to conform myself to the direct transmission.

By "conform", the expectation is exactly that.  I am not to make it "my interpretation of the art", or "my take on the technique".  I am to learn and execute the technique precisely as I am shown it.

Do not think this is an idle idea.  We spent far more time that we should have during my most recent training on me doing a technique that I was clearly doing wrong, at least to everyone but me.  I arrested the flow of class several times over the course of 5 days because I was simply not doing it right - I was doing how I saw the technique, not how the technique actually was to be done.

To do the technique precisely as shown - without my add-ons or interpretations - is to humble myself to the authority of my headmaster.  

In a similar fashion, our relationship with God and His commands should be no different.  God is not looking for personal interpretation or personal "flair" when He gives us His commands.  He is expecting us to execute on them as written.

Yes, I know.  God did not make us all the same, and the application of His commands can be very different for different situations.  But "different for different situations" is a very different things from "I think that God really meant this when He said..."

Like myself and my training, God has given us direct transmission in the form of Scripture.  And like my headmaster, I very much suspect His expectation is less "How did you interpret it?" and more "Did you do what I asked in the way I asked it?"

Spending Time

 

One of the things I have become more conscious of through a variety of sources - the move to New Home 3.0, doing a study of Essentialism, the reality of the passing of my parents, and even just reading on things as varied as sleep and e-mail - is the nature of my time and how I use it.

Time consciousness is something that we as a society seem to both cultivate and completely ignore. One the one hand, ever since the Quality and Productivity movements of the 1950's and 1960's, we have been on a quest to improve how we use our time at work.  Technology has assisted us even more in this progress:  we now track things down to the second and work to eliminate every obstacle to getting something done as efficiently and quickly as possible, whether through providing a thing "Just-In-Time" or using communication technology to communicate and inform 24/7.

On the other hand, we seem to never train ourselves in the use of time away from that structure environment.  We work productively so that we can have more time to ourselves, yet somehow manage to fill that time with things that may or may not be productive.  "Productive" is a subjective word to be sure:  what may productive to someone by relaxation (for example, sports or movies or on-line games) to me may not resonate at other activities.  Yet I suspect that all of us, were we to be honest with ourselves, would find that we are too often letting large swaths of time slip through our fingers.

I had never really thought of the idea of "spending time" before I read the quote above.  But that is really the point, is it not?  We can use time thoughtlessly or thoughtfully, by wild abandon and laziness or thoughtful planning.  Either way the time is gone; it is up to us to determine whether it was well spent.

What is the difference to me?  Simply asking the fundamental question of "How am I consciously using my time?" before I being anything.  And not just the usual things:  sleep, lunch, even writing.  "Thoughtfully" is not the same as "productively" per se; for example, I am making an effort to get the 7-9 hours of sleep a night that most adults still need.  That may be "thoughtful"; the "productive" part only comes by the benefit of that sleep.

The more I go on this journey, the more I wonder how I have managed to unconsciously go through life.

Essentialism (IX): Essence Of The Essentialist: Discern

"Most of what exists in the universe - our actions and all other forces, resources, and ideas - has little value and yields little result; on the other hand, a few things work fantastically well and have tremendous impact" - Richard Koch

Most of us of a certain age remember Boxer, the plodding and patient work horse from Orwell's book Animal Farm.  When confronted with yet more tasks, he simply says "I will work harder" - until the day, of course, Boxer simply disappears and is never spoken of again. Like Boxer, says McKeown, we have the same tendency:  when presented with even more tasks, we simply say "I will work harder".   But for anyone, especially capable people, McKeown posits the following question:  Is there a limit to the value of hard work?  Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more?

McKeown's example - an example we likely have made in different ways - came when as a young lad, he delivered papers.  He knew what he got paid and came to associate that rate (in number of papers delivered and time) with what it would buy him.  Then one day he discovered he could wash neighbors' cars for one morning instead of delivering papers for six mornings a week to get the same money but have more time.

Later, as a customer service rep, he learned the same lesson.  When asking himself "What was the most valuable result I could achieve at his job?", he realized that it was winning customers back who were going to cancel. Since non-canceled customers yielded a bonus, he "learned more, earned more, and contributed more".

Working hard, he notes is important:  "But more effort does not necessarily yield more results.  Less but better does".

Less but better may be hard for most people to adjust to - after all, rewards in the past (in the Western Economy at least) tend to track directly between doing more and more and more.  But more and more more eventually yields less and less and less.

Most people have heard of the Pareto Principle proposed by Vilifredo Pareto, where 20% of anything contributes 80% of the results (and the contrary, that 80% of anything contributes 20% of the results).    People may be less familiar with Joseph Moses Juran, an engineer and one of the fathers of the modern Quality movement, who discussed the idea of "The Vital Few" - simply put, that one can improve the quality of a product by resolving a very small fraction of the problem (In an interesting "might-have-been", he attempted to disseminate his ideas in the Post-WW II US, but they were not well received.  They were quite happily received in post-War Japan, which sky rocketed from a reputation of poorly made products to trend setters in terms of quality and technology.  Over time, we know how that story ended).

McKeown notes "Distinguishing the 'trivial many' from the 'vital few' can be applied to every kind of human endeavor large or small and has been done so by Richard Koch (see the quote above), author of several books on how to apply the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) to everyday life".  The example he gives is Warren Buffer, who limits his investments to a small number of thing that he understands - and then invests heavily in them.

"The overwhelming reality is:  we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.  As John Maxwell has written, 'You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything'".

Application:

It is pretty easy for me at my place of work to identify things that are those "vital few" which truly contribute to making progress.  It is much more difficult for me to do it in my personal life.

Why?  I suppose I could argue that a personal life is much less clear than that of a work life; feelings and personal relationships make clinical decision making difficult.  But if I am truly fair, that is simply a cop out for not being willing to do the hard work of looking into things and evaluating, for each major stream or activity or relationship, what the truly "vital few" are in that thing that would significantly change the outcome.

In other words, I tend to laziness.  And Essentialism, if nothing else, is not for the lazy.

The Collapse CLXXXII: Fire

17 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Last night the RV Bar burned.

By all guesses (based on the fire) it was set in the evening, a convenient enough time as it both allowed the fire to grow while people were not out and would have frustrated any attempts to fight it, were any to be made.

By the time Young Xerxes and Staterra pounded on our door and alerted us, it was well aflame, orange tips rising about the housing line about a quarter of a mile away. I dressed and headed out with Young Xerxes leaving Pompeia Paulina and Stateira at The Cabin.

Likely not anything but a fire, of course. But no sense in taking risk.

By the time we got there the whole building – clad mostly in rustic looking weathered wood at one time – was engulfed. There is a large enough dirt parking lot about it that any immediate damage to structures was low; that said, there was a small group there with some visually tracking sparks as they were carried aloft.

It is seldom that I have stood close enough to a structure fire to see it in any detail. The flames whirled and swirled, flickering smoke and cinders into the sky. The interior of the building was hinted at through the holes and cracks in the outer building. Occasional cracks and crashes echoed from the outside.

It burned. And burned. And burned, late into the morning, the cracks and crashes becoming more and more frequent until large portions of the structure settled down.

We were blessed last night with an almost complete lack of wind, which at least lowered the risk of floating embers. The distance from all other structures reduced the immediate fire risk; from all that Young Xerxes heard today, there were not other fires, or at least nothing that was significant.

I took a walk with Pompeia Paulina to the site this afternoon. It was still smouldering and smoking, charred wood in shambles with bits of metal from tables and silverware and kitchen appliances peaking through. I would use the word “total loss”, but I have no idea what was in there in the first place.

Could it have been a true accident? I suppose, yes – but given the fact we have had no power for over a year and the building was abandoned this week, the chances that something just spontaneously happened seems, while not impossible, extremely low.

I do not enjoy mysteries Lucilius, especially ones that hint of things under the surface that I cannot see.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Anatolian Museum of Civilization (I)

 As hopefully you have seen from these past months, Turkey is a country rich in history - in some ways, perhaps the richest in history I know of (or have certainly been to).  Its history goes back at least 12,000 years, dwarfing anything I have ever been to.  

An attempt to bring that history together is found at the Anatolian Museum of Civilization in Ankara.

The museum encompasses artifacts from all parts of Turkey:  Neolithic, Bronze/Iron Age, Phrygian, Lydian, Greek, Roman - all have representatives here.

Uratu column element, 7th Century B.C.:

Neolithic Tools and weapons:

Reconstruction of an early sedentary house, 9,000 years or so B.C.:

Cave drawings:

2024 Turkey: Atatürks Tomb (II) Changing of the Guard

The responsibility of guarding Atatürk tomb falls to the Turkish Armed Forces, a combination of the Turkish Land Forces, the Turkish Naval Forces, and the Turkish Air Forces.  Like many such national monuments, they have changing of the guard ceremonies.  We were fortunate enough to be there for one.

On Packaging Waste

 One of the rather interesting perspectives one gets as one travels across several countries in a short time is how waste is handled.

I know; it is a pretty obscure subject.  The thing that brought it to mind was coming home and being subjected to how the U.S. does it.

In Japan, at least where we were, items are separated into cans, plastic bottles/PET, and burnable trash.  In Europe, it was cans, Plastic/Pet, Paper, and "other".  In the U.S., it is separated into cans/bottles, generic "recyclables", and non-recyclable waste.

I suppose that it is of interest to me because we (of the Industrial and Post-Industrial revolution) are the first human civilization that has to meaningfully deal with this.

Plastic, of course, is probably the biggest difference. I did not think about plastic in great detail until a visit some years ago to Colonial Williamsburg.  There, the living historian in the leather shop pointed out that until the 20th century, leather served the purposes that plastic now does: it was available, readily malleable, and could be used for a variety of purposes (arguably, wood filled different niches but the same function).  The difference between us and them, of course, is that leather and wood are biodegradable.  Plastic, not so much.

When I purchase any typical item anymore, I have to go through at least one, possibly two, and maybe three levels of packaging to get the item.  That packaging has no inherent value after its initial use except in some odd situations, like building a cardboard fort or saving packing paper to use for rabbit cage lining.  That becomes even more pronounced in the food industry or my own industry of biopharmaceuticals, where we not only want the material packaged, we would prefer the packaging to protect the food from adverse substances or the materials used to make drugs to be sterile.

It interests me because, for all of the cry of "too much packaging" (and there is quite a lot), we have yet to strike the balance of what needs and does not need packaging.  Does my furniture from IKEA? No, probably - unless I want undamaged furniture when I get it.  Does my food need it?  Yes, probably - think of the issue of fruits and vegetables handled by everyone put to the extreme of every food.

I can cut down on the packaging I try to use, but every time I order something or purchase something - especially online - it will more often than not come in packaging that is oversized for the product.

Now, add to that all the money to manufacture the packaging - to make it from new or recycled materials, to form it, to label or mark it, to ship it to where it needs to be used, and then to dispose of it - and I suspect we are starting to talk about significant numbers.

Is there a solution?  I am not sure.  But it certainly seems like an area ripe for some kind of innovative thinking.

A Year Of Humility (IX): A Job Application

 Recently I applied for a higher level position at my current company.

I was notified that it was coming and "encouraged" to apply (if I read my personal interaction cards right).  I went through the process like anyone else - updated CV, Letter of Interest - and off it wandered into the world of computer applications (on the bright side, at least I know it will not get washed out in the initial pass).

At the time of this writing, the outcome is unknown - but there are only three possible ones.  The first is that I get the job.  The second is that someone else in my department gets the job.  The third is that someone from outside our department or the company gets the job.

Of the options, the first is and third are relatively easy to understand and follow up with - the first for sure of course (who am I to complain about me getting a promotion) and the third (someone undoubtedly brought in for greater experience and/or specialized expertise).  But the second - someone else - is the part of today's meditation because it brings up the following question: How do I serve in a current position when I have been passed over internally?

Before you dismiss it as a simple question, I urge you to think back to your own career - to yourself, or someone that you had worked with whom applied to an internal position.  You can remember the angst and concern as they went through the process - and often, the burning blow they felt when they were "rejected" for someone else.

There are one of two reactions we can have in such situations.  The first is the reaction of being embittered, of being angry, of constantly arguing about the person ("X had all the ins") or the process ("They never really considered me") or the company ("They have no intent on moving people like me [whatever "me" is] up the ladder").  The difficulty here - beyond just the initial reaction - is the fact that this attitude bleeds itself into every aspect of work, given time.  I have almost never seen an employee who felt they were (legitimately or illegitimately) passed over not become somehow embittered over time.

The second reaction is that of humility.

It is certain that one cannot always know all of the factors that go into a hire (having been a hiring manager and having been on multiple hiring teams, there are a great many things that make up a hiring choice).  And while I like to believe that teams get it right for the right reasons, that is not always the case - nor should it matter.

It goes back to that somewhat nagging line in Philippians 2:3-4:  "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility of mind count others better than yourselves.  Let of each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." (RSV).  "Nothing" there simply means "nothing" - Not one thing.

What are the interests of others here?  That I do my job competently and joyfully (or at least with as much joy as I can muster).  That I do not hold back one thing that I was doing before I had applied to after the decision.  That I work for my new manager just as hard as I worked for my previous one (who will still be around).  That I do my best to make my new manager look just as good as I did my previous one.

Ultimately, that there is no interruption in the work no matter who is managing me or what position I have or do not have.

It is easy enough to say that for a single position.  It becomes endlessly more difficult when one puts aside the idea that one may never move forward in this job.  And then extrapolate it to every position or role we play in our lives.

Modern society only, ever, has us on an upward track.  Humility says something far different:  "It matters not what you are or what you are doing or even whether the situation gets better or more agreeable.  Humbly work and serve as if God Himself were your employer or manager."

Which ultimately, of course, He really is.

On Electronic Books

 As you might recall, last month I acquired a library card from my local county library, something that I had not owned for some years.  And while I physically checked out a couple of books, the equally interesting benefit to me was the fact that I could get books electronically and read them on my phone.

The interface was surprisingly better than I had thought it would be on my phone: the book was readable and in some cases were far more readily accessible than waiting for the hard copy to arrive and at least in one case, was the only copy that existed.  And so I have experimented with reading books on my phone as an alternative form of reading.

That said, having completed what is the initial "trial run", it is not something I think I will do on a regular basis.

The problem is not really with the actual technology - it is easy enough to use and the book downloads on your phone quite readily and is thus available anywhere.  The real issue was pushed to my mind during a read of Cal Newport's book A World Without E-mail, a bit ironically about how e-mail has made us less communicative, not more.  What I realized, as I held my phone in my hand and read it, is that while I was reading, what I was really doing was training myself to spend more time on my phone.

If anything, I already spend too much time in front of screens. Between work, writing, and the inevitable "just checking" things on my phone, I could easily argue that half of my day is spent looking at a screen of some kind.  That strikes me as not being good for a lot of things:  my ability to concentrate, my vision, even my sleep patterns.

More importantly perhaps, it disrupts my ability to concentrate.

When reading a physical book one has to concentrate on the book - primarily of course because it is contained in one's hands. It is not easy to just "flick over" to e-mail or social media or a bank account; one has to put down the book and go to the next task.  This is true of any physical activity of course:  it is the thing that we are doing and cannot be easily turned away from without stopping the activity entirely.

Reading a book on my phone simply enforces my bad habits of multi-tasking, which themselves are exercises in failure.  It also reinforces the idea that I can split my attention between things and somehow maintain the same level of concentration.

I have three books currently to read and one in waiting.  After that, I believe I will be returning to the "old-fashioned" theory of the physical book on a more frequent basis.  It may not be as convenient, but convenience is not really a thing I need at the moment.  Focus, concentration, and engagement are.