Another great video from School of Life, philosopher Alain de Botton’s explainer for existence, examines self-esteem.

Where does self-esteem come from? His answers are surprising:

• Self-esteem has almost nothing to do with your particular achievements (“verifiable benchmarks,” as he calls them)
• How you compare to your same-sex parent has a lot to do with it: have you achieved more or less than mom or dad?
• How you compare to your age-peers has a lot to do with it: how are the people with whom you were educated, are about your age, and who live near you?
• What kind of love did you receive as a child? Was love conditional on achievement? Do you consistently pine for parental approval?

The degree of relativity is fascinating in this analysis: a person who is- by all conventional indications-successful, might feel less self esteem than a person who is monetarily poor but who is more well off than his father. And having attended college with a Bill Gates or Elon Musk doesn’t predispose you to healthy levels.

Self-esteem is a “prize of psychology,” not a fruit of something we achieve in the economy.

Self-Esteem

Rowing Level has a great section of their site for seeing how your rowing performance compares to others, as generally or specifically as you like. I can’t vouch for the validity of the data, but I am in the novice range for both the 7500 and 10k rows I’ve been favoring as of late:

Novice, for Rowing Level, is someone who has been rowing for “at least” six months, which is true for me currently and includes the time I spent rowing back in 2015-16. That first jag lasted from March 2015 through January 2016, but I was at most rowing every other day then, and it eventually tapered off to nothing when I decided to start lifting weights.

Another thing about my first stab: I was good about keeping data, but I didn’t use it to progress and didn’t vary my workouts ( I mostly did steady state of either 5000k or 30 mins). This go-round, especially recently, finds me scrutinizing my stats and increasing my goals. I started simply, following Apple Fitness + workouts. A new rower with a PM5 has changed my data game a bit and it’s exciting… and motivating.

I’ve sucked in the neighborhood of 50 pounds off of my frame. And I’m excited to row. Every day.

“Each of us is inevitable. Each of us is limitless.” – Walt Whitman

It’s a question as old as therapy itself, and one insurance adjusters are keen to answer. I have always thought that most studies come up with about a 50% success rate… similar to a placebo.

The most significant difference in patient outcomes, Wampold says, almost always lies in the skills of the therapist, rather than the techniques they rely on. Hundreds of studies have shown that the strength of the patient-therapist bond — a patient’s sense of safety and alignment with the therapist on how to reach defined goals — is a powerful predictor of how likely that patient is to experience results from therapy. But what distinguishes the therapists most likely to forge those bonds is not intuitive. Wampold says that some of the attributes that would seem most salient — a therapist’s agreeability, years of training, years of experience — do not correlate at all with effectiveness of care.

Maybe it’s the relationship that matters, not the discipline.

Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack That.

Hugh Jackman, who is to Wolverine what Robert Downey Jr is to Tony Stark, prefers rowing to keep fit:

“There’s a reason the rower’s usually empty at the gym—because it’s difficult,” he said. “And a lot of people want to say it and feel they’ve worked out, and they want to get a sweat, but they don’t necessarily… And the rowing machine—I think if you add in some chest work, some pushups, that’s everything you need to keep fit, healthy, strong… It’s such a good building exercise for deadlifts and all these core movements, compound movements, getting your scapula—everything sort of in the right place—and your breathing and relaxing your neck, you know, at the same time as doing it.”

I scrubbed up to the section of the Tim Ferriss podcast to listen to where Jackman dishes on rowing. He said that all you need is 7 minutes, four times a week. But then he said something like “shoot for 2000.” I thought at first that that’s a pretty light bit of rowing for someone in good shape. But then I realized maybe he’s talking about getting 2k in 7 minutes, which would be a pretty impressive split time of 1:45. That makes a bit more sense.

Hugh Jackman Just Shared Some of His Best Workout and Training Advice With Tim Ferriss.

Jared Andrukanis, quoted from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography in Vanity Fair:

He put a lot of everything in that basket–he shoveled his work life, his personal life, he shoveled his persona into his relationship, and that is a recipe for fucking disaster, no matter who you are.

“That basket” being his relationship with Asia Argento, for whom he appeared to be limerent right up to his tragic end.

“I Knew It Was Doomed; I Knew Someone Was Doomed”: Inside Anthony Bourdain’s All-Consuming Relationship

Alia Wong, writing for The Atlantic:

One easy fix: a little bell-schedule rejiggering so that middle-schoolers can fuel their growing appetites when their bodies need it. Cruz’s school, Oyster-Adams, decided to implement a 20-minute snack break at 10:45 a.m. so the district’s existing lunchtime for the school (which also serves younger grades on another part of campus) wouldn’t leave her with hangry tweens. Another change: Middle-school classrooms should budget for air conditioning—tween bodies do not smell or feel good when it’s stuffy inside. Of course, the structural changes that benefit one community of preteens may not make sense in another.

Would that it were so easy.

Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People?

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We spend our lives trying to anchor our transience in some illusion of permanence and stability. We lay plans, we make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us with the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in a pool of the unknown, the heart breaks open and allows life — life itself, not the simulacrum of life that comes from control — to rush in.

Maria Popova, reviewing Tina Davidson’s Let Your Heart Be Broken

I was surprised to learn that, like iA Writer, OneNote can create a new note using brackets (aka wikilinks). It’s a handy shortcut that can save you some time and clicks. Here’s how it works:

• Type two square brackets [[ ]] anywhere on your page.

• Inside the brackets, type the title of your new note. For example, [[My Shopping List]].

• Press Enter or click outside the brackets.

• Voila! You have created a new note with the title you typed. You can see it in your notebook list on the left.

(This shortcut works in OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote 2016, and OneNote Online. You can also use it to link to existing notes by typing their titles inside the brackets.)