The Weekly Review: Vol VI Issue 20
Friends, it’s good to write to you again. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, I’ve gone from being uncertain whether I’d hit my goal for newsletter this year (25), to blowing by it. I’ve got the rest of the year queued up and even some content prepped for 2020. That hasn’t been the case since I relaunched The Weekly Review back in… 2016 😮
It feels good to be a little ahead for once. I hope you enjoy!
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Polar Vantage update
It’s been almost one year since I got my Polar Vantage M. Items like these always get a review after a couple of weeks of us; maybe a couple months at most. But it’s nice to hear how these devices hold up over time and shape our habits.
So here’s how I feel about the Vantage after 11 months of full time, every day use.
Discoloration
My wife purchased the white watch with the white band. Overall, the band has been very comfortable and I assume it’s comparable to the Apple Watch silicon band. The only thing that I’m noticing is the discolouration.
Daily use is going to have an effect on a product. Especially one that is against your skin and worn during exercise. So I’m not surprised at all to see a bit of a yellow tinge. However, it’s interesting to note that most of the coloring is happening to the body of the device, less so with the band. I had planned to pick up a replacement band, but it will look odd to be so pristine next to a yellowed watch.
Sleep tracking
Hardware aside, it’s the software I always care about the most. And what I’ve been most impressed with lately is the sleep tracking. Polar released an update this fall and it changed what the Vantage is tracking when you sleep and how it’s displayed.
Now you get two ratings for each night: an ANS charge and a Sleep charge. The first charge measures how well your ANS (automatic nervous system) calms down each night by tracking your breathing rate, heart rate, and heart rate variability.
The second charge measures your sleep structure by tracking how long you spend in the three sleep stages (light, REM, and deep).
Now, if you hear a skeptical voice in your head asking how a watch can possibly measure all of those things, I hear you. However, I would value its ratings better than a phone (so many popular sleep tracking iOS apps use the microphone to track your sleep — movement and heart rate have to be better). But still, I would love to hear from a sleep expert about how useful these kinds of devices are for this kind of analysis.
Subjectively, I can say that the days after a night where I score well, I feel more energetic and awake. The following night is one where I do things like get some writing done, rather than just fall asleep after putting down the kids.
A great device
Overall, I would still recommend the Vantage M to anyone looking for a casual–to–serious athletic activity tracker. If you’re training for an Ironman, maybe you need something higher end. But for everyone else, this is a more than solid option.
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Items of note
A Few Words about Bibles
Alan Jacobs writes about Bibles in a recent newsletter. He mentions the Illuminated version of the ESV that was illustrated by Dana Tanamachi. That caught my eye as that’s the Bible I’m currently using (and thanks to an ordering gaffe, so is my wife — I bought two copies).
He very briefly gets into how it can be hard to mark up these nice Bibles that are works of art.
I myself own some beautifully bound Bibles, but I am always slightly uneasy about them. They are precious, but that’s a word with several meanings, and all of them are operative here.
But he is open to trying new things in a plainer version that focuses on reading:
For the last couple of years my everyday Bible has been this ESV Reader’s Edition, a plain hardcover that’s printed and bound like a novel or a work of history. I typically do not use highlighters, but I’ve been doing this little experiment in which I go through the Bible to isolate certain themes. For instance, the blue highlighting marks passages that relate to N. T. Wright’s comprehensive (some might say rather too comprehensive) account of the Big Story of the Bible; the green marks passages that deal with Christology. I also have been marking in a different color the passages that deal with what St. Paul calls the “principalities and powers,” a topic I am profoundly interested in. It’s nice to have a Bible around that’s marked up in this particular way. Perhaps later I will add new themes, and use new colors to identify them.
I share his struggles. I do underline some passages, but hesitate to add more. Part of this is due to my unsightly handwriting and lack of drawing ability. It’s also partly due that most of my more permanent notes go into a digital tool (Ulysses, for the record).
But my wife has no such compunctions. She’s add notes anyway, anywhere — and they look good (see below).
I admire her tenacity to work out the text on the paper with which she reads it!
If this topic is at all an interest to you, you might also enjoy Jacobs writing about Crossway and the ESV as well.
This Is Professionalism
This post is five years old, but represents all that is good about the internet. It’s written by an intelligent person who cares about craft and integrity, it’s hosted on a personal blog, and it’s still around 5 years after it was published. And it’s full of solid wisdom.
I immediately realized I wasn’t hired to do specific fully-defined tasks, but rather to further the goals of the team and company. It’s up to me to learn voraciously and think critically about the problem, the solution, the constraints. It’s up to me to become fully aware of all my contexts - business pressure, schedule, financial considerations, deployment strategy, etc etc. Then it’s up to me to do whatever I can within my sphere of influence to help the team succeed.
And:
Autonomy, responsibility, and humility can be uncomfortable. They can be tiring and complicated. But a mistake isn’t the only opportunity to work on them. Sometimes it’s about raising your hand when you see a hidden risk that could cause trouble later. Sometimes it’s about keeping an open mind when others are speaking. Sometimes it’s just about admitting you don’t know everything and making an honest effort to learn something new.
It’s so easy in the moment, in the bustle and busyness of the workday, to see something not quite right, but brush it off because it’s not your responsibility. Or because it requires an uncomfortable conversation, or you have to “bother” someone.
But being a professional means doing what is required.
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Quote of the week
You just got up early, before anybody else is moving around — except you can hear your wife stirring. Teenager’s probably not up, but school is coming, so he might be dragging himself out. And you’re reading your Bible in your favorite quiet, secluded place. You’re reading about God, and about his ways.
And then, quietly, perhaps unexpectedly, God supernaturally shifts your mind-set, and you are no longer merely reading about him. You are quietly aware he is here. The living, risen Christ is in this room, and he is speaking to you through that page. And your soul shifts from thinking about him to speaking to him. Now you are turning the word into statements to him, to the effect that “this is who you are.”
John Piper, What God Can Do in Daily Devotions
The first paragraph is a good description of my days. I want the second paragraph to be an increasingly good description of my days as well!
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Currently
Reading: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Not what I expected so far (I should have read the description more carefully). It’s less about margin and rest and more about breaking free of the tyranny of the urgent as habituated by social media (seriously, it’s subtitled “How to resist the attention economy”… I was really not on the ball here). So far it reminds me of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimilism.
Drinking: I’m very much into this new trend of putting lactose in beer. A current new find of mine is Southern Belle Peaches & Cream by Powell Brewery. With vanilla and lactose, it’s a full bodied ale that is more sweet than a sour with a lot of fruit flavor. I dig it!
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If you’re in the US of A, I hope you’re having a wonderful Thanksgiving. For everyone else, thanks for reading and talk to you again next week!