Bathroom Door Locks

I've been wrong about something. I love when that happens! In fact, this is Jubilant Blunder week, between this and my recent change of heart on Vision Pro.

Digression: Discovering my wrongness feels like gliding a missing puzzle piece into position with an easy snap, beholding the aesthetically soothing result. Nothing else feels quite so right as uncovering one's own wrongness.

At least for me. Nearly everyone else appears to invest much of their vital energy into hiding from their wrongness. You can be smart, or you can feel smart, but not both! Smart-feelers self-insulate from truth and correction.

Criticism (even friendly, non-condescending criticism) only became anathema because this is a world of smart-feelers, for whom truth is like sunlight to vampires.

Focus Mode is an iOS (and now, MacOS) feature where you pre-configure certain environments where your device tunes out certain people, apps, notifications, and distractions. So if I were to create a Slogging focus mode, it might block out all texts, emails, phone calls, and app notifications, and lock my screen into single-window (I use HazeOver for this). Here's a terrific eleven minute summary of Focus Mode by the delightfully nasal MacSparky (see footer for more on him).

This sort of approach always struck me as feeble and childish. Silly bathroom locks. After all, I can undo any of the restraints. If I want to check my damn mail, I'm gonna check my damn mail. I have been trained over the decades to persist when my computer, for whatever reason, thwarts my will.

But then I remembered something. I slogged about it once, titling it, only semi-ironically, "The Greatest Lesson Ever Taught". So you'd think I'd bear it in mind. But, no! I'm painfully slow, fuzzy, and blurry (all my clarity channels into these postings). Here it is in its entirety:

Earlier this year I bought a cover for my second car, an old Miata, to keep the birds from crapping all over it. It takes just one minute to easily uncover the car, and another minute to easily replace the cover after I get home.

I have not driven the car once since.

The MacSparky video is a hidden link, only for subscribers to MacSparky Labs. I'm revealing it with permission, plus offering a 10% discount to any Labs membership (I get nothing if you sign up) via code FRIENDSOFJIM, good until March 4, 2024).

David Sparks is not the most technically expert or widest ranging of Mac pundits, but he's an unapologetic nerd who takes highly tactical and obsessive immersions into various areas of interest. To learn everything about automation on a Mac, he's the guy. Same for Obsidian (which I wrote about here). These and other topics are exhaustively covered in his various Field Guides, the sine qua non for realms most Mac users barely scratch. This MacSparky Labs thing offers incremental updates on his various quests. Lots of quick videos of David breathlessly exulting in some new shortcut he just found or whatever. Worth a few bucks a month.