Causes and effects

Sometimes discomfort has a single, discernible cause.

A period of digestive upset might be caused by a virus or food allergen. Hip pain might be caused by a fall. A headache might be caused by a change in vision.

More often, though, discomfort and dysfunction are caused by a confluence of factors.

Chronic worry + acute stress + "I ate something I shouldn't" + poor sleep + decreased food diversity = digestive symptoms.

Sitting for work + acute stress + screens + chronic heavy periods + "that time I was sick for a month as a kid" = another headache.

Sedentariness + social isolation + "that old sports injury" + worry about the kids + resentment = hip acting up.

If the goal is relief, rather than endlessly ruminating about causes, time might be better spent developing a strategy to improve as many known determinants of health as possible.

Lights off

Responsible humans power down electronics when not using them and turn off lights when leaving a room. It saves power and money and prevents more bad stuff from spilling out into the world.

We carry on our shoulders a costly device; a wonderful tool that also puts out terrible stuff when overused. No doubt it has several worthy applications in a day.

But what deliberate rituals power down your intellectual mind when it's not serving one of these noble purposes?

Efficiency audit

Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle.

In the lefthand column (A), list the activities that you would like to be spending your time on because they are most likely to promote health, happiness, and security.

Maybe it's some sort of physical activity, cooking, time in Nature, positive social interaction, raising the kids, reading, writing, art, meditation, skill practice, strategizing, day-dreaming, or learning something that will benefit yourself, your family, your business, or your community.

In the righthand column (B), list the activities that you are spending your time on.

Hopefully there's some overlap.

Of the column B activities that don't overlap, can any be eliminated or handed off to a service, a program, or AI so that you have more time for column A?

We haven't streamed much in our home in the last year and there's a growing list of small-business chores we've eliminated or hired software to do. I write every word of this blog, but I'll ask Claude to write up a first draft of a letter to my Congressperson or an email to customer service. And there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Efficiencies can be well worth the time it takes to research them and set them up if they lead to a better quality of life. And if money is available, they can be well worth that too.

They're just a partial fix, of course. Much of the work of making space for health and happiness involves changing systems. And like everything else, the subject of efficiency is fraught with inequities.

But I find an occasional efficiency audit to be a worthy column A activity for anyone in honest pursuit of better.