#28 - Prince Ali and the Clean Slate Strategy
Photo of the Week
This is my garage freezer - a.k.a. Prince Ali. He got an unplanned full cleaning this week which is the basis for this week’s essay.
Prince Ali and the Clean Slate Strategy
Fun fact: I’m an enormous Disney fan yet I’ve never seen a Disney Live Action Movie.
Despite that fact, I’ve seen the Broadway version of Aladdin once in full in Chicago and several times in the abbreviated version that is both at the Disney parks and on the Disney ships.
It rises and falls on the quality of the Genie! The Broadway style version relies on pop culture references and jokes the Genie makes. We’ve skipped the show on the ship before out of fear that the Genie would be obnoxious.
Back to the freezer named Prince Ali. My “too freaking large for one human” garage freezer was a freak out pandemic purchase.
I named him Ali because of this image - Prince Ali riding in on an elephant all dressed in white. He just felt that large and over the top to me when I saw him for the first time as the delivery crew brought him in and hooked him up.
I picked up my grocery order which had one carton of ice cream in it. When I opened Ali to put in the carton, I realized that Ali was far, far too warm.
While everything was too far gone to recover, luckily it had not been gone so long that it was smelly or too disgusting. Additionally, it wasn’t going to get worse. The freezer had not failed. The outlet - a GFCI and the only outlet in my garage - had tripped. A quick reset of the outlet and the freezer was cooling again. I kept everything cold until trash day when the freezer got a full clean out.
So, why did I tell you this?
A clean slate is one of the most powerful strategies for habit change that I know.
Whether you move to a new home, start a new role at work, or simply start another work week - clean slates are incredibly powerful.
My intention when I bought Ali was to begin batch cooking once a month. While I did that for a while, I started buying all sorts of extra items during the supply chain shortages we experienced during COVID. Unfortunately, I never recovered from overstocking myself in this way.
So now that Ali is clean, I’m starting fresh again - and also using this to reinvigorate my goals around healthy eating.
What’s you’re favorite strategy for habit change?
Tools, Tips, & Tricks
A Dongle Might Solve Your Problem - Especially for Headphones
On my recent trip to Washington DC, I experienced one of the many travel delays that are plaguing the world today. I had been using my beloved Bose Sport Wireless Earbuds all day even before I got to the airport though and while they come in a fantastic charging case, they died right as we were finally getting ready to board our flight. I could charge them while we flew - but that could have meant a flight with nothing to listen to.
However, I always carry spare adapter cables - the official name is a dongle - and wired headphones in my (also beloved) travel cable bag. For a newer iPad/iPhone you might need a USB-C to headphone dongle or a Lightning to headphone dongle. For most newer model Samsung Galaxy phones/tablets (and most Android phones/tablets) you’ll need the USB-C to headphone dongle. If you have older devices, they make dongles for those if needed as well (perhaps your headphone port has gone out on an older device).
When a port does die or you get a device that won’t work with your expensive tool you’ve already invested in, seeing if a dongle exists to help you connect the older device to the newer device is often a low cost method to continue using your older device.
A Smart Solution to My Freezer Problem
Now that my freezer has failed once, I do not want it to fail again - or if it does, I want to know immediately.
I learned in my research that this issue of a GFCI outlet as the only outlet in a place where you might have important things plugged in is not uncommon.
From my research, the best option for smart monitoring of a GFCI is the GFCI Notify outlet monitoring system. I would also like to add a temperature monitor in the freezer for redundancy but reviews of all of these tools seem less than adequate right now. So, I’ll at least try this for a while.
What I Published This Week
Ship30 Series - Planning Personal Learning
I published all seven days this week as I continued my personal learning series. You can read each of the articles from the primary article on Medium or Hive.
Lifebook Series
As a part of my annual goals, I’m also looking for some accountability partners to make sure I meet my goal to get my “life book” updated. Here is more about that - Medium and Hive. I finished Week 1 really well and have posted Week 2 - again, you can find all of those from the main post linked above.
What I’m Reading This Week
No really new reading this week again. Lots of continuing work.
Diversion
Wanna experience the Broadway style Genie in action. This was a pretty good performance although not my video.
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